


Kung Fu Grip

by 8sword



Category: Supernatural
Genre: De-Aged Dean Winchester, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2014, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Domestic Dean Winchester, Episode: s09e07 Bad Boys, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Kid Fic, M/M, Protective Dean Winchester, stepsisters!Claire and Emma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-23 00:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 57,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2528015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cas, I've been enrolling me and Sammy in schools since I was twelve. I think I can handle it."</p><p>Cas is frowning. "It's not a matter of--handling it," he says. "The principal will be more receptive and helpful to you if she believes you to have a parent or guardian who is actively concerned with your welfare. I want to make sure she understands you are important."</p><p>Dean does not get a warm squishy feeling in his chest.</p><p>(In which Dean is de-aged, Claire and Emma are simultaneously the worst and best sisters ever, and Cas really deserves a hug.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [His Fucking Kids](https://archiveofourown.org/works/662981) by [8sword](https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword). 



> Warnings: Spoilers through S9. Cursing and homophobic language. Violence. Mentally Dean is not under-aged, but if non-explicit scenes between 18-year-old Dean and canon-age Castiel makes you uneasy, this fic is probably not a good idea.
> 
> Notes: This fic started as an AU of canon and of the His Fucking Kids series. It ended up becoming a weird amalgamation of both. It uses all the things I like from S7 on and ignores the things I don't, so basically I have become my own Eugenie Ross-Leming. Oops.
> 
> I like to think you can read it without having read HFK. However, certain emotional undertones will be more pronounced if you have read "Pot and Kettle" and "Disney Princess." (Please note Claire's birthday is not December 26 in this fic.)
> 
> Lastly, I wrote most of this fic with Dylan Everett playing the role of de-aged Dean in my head. It would probably be more accurate chronologically to envision Brock Kelly. Pick your poison, is what I'm saying.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

([Art Masterpost](http://gandocaloca.livejournal.com/514.html)) ([Playlist](http://8tracks.com/8sword/kung-fu-grip))

  

 

**_I'll fight for you to stay._ **

**\-- "Bad Boys," 9.07**

 

Cas's Honda is in the driveway already when Dean pulls up that afternoon. He grins and takes the steps up to the porch two at a time. "Cas?"

"Would you check the mail?" Cas is coming down the stairs, a laundry basket overflowing with bath towels. A single blue bra dangles over the side. "The prepaid college bill hasn't come yet, we might need to call--"

Dean beelines for him, grabbing the bra, which is most likely Claire's, out of the basket by two fingers. "Dude, you can't wash bras with towels."

"Why not?"

"'Cause they're delicates. If you put 'em in with towels, they'll get… I dunno. Messed up."

"Towels are soft," Cas says stubbornly.

Dean rolls his eyes and tosses the bra back into the laundry basket. "Whatever. Let Claire yell at you for messing up her bra, see if I care." He darts around Cas to thunder past him up the stairs, slapping him on the ass as he goes.

"Dean!"

"Yeah, babe?"

Cas looks long-suffering, but there's also a smile denting the corners of his eyes. "The mail?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll get it." Dean disappears into the bedroom to get changed, and Cas proceeds into the garage to start the wash.

Dean heads back down the stairs a few minutes later, wearing a sweatshirt and a t-shirt that's not stiff with sweat, and a different pair of jeans. Mondays are his short days at the garage, since all Mondays suck and making them shorter makes them better. He jogs back down the front porch steps and down the ridiculously long walk to their mailbox, shivering as he kicks slush off the sidewalk he shoveled _just frickin' yesterday_. There's a whole buttload of envelopes sitting in the mailbox, and he starts to rifle through them as he heads back up to the house, letting himself back into the warmth of the front hallway. Bill, something for Cas, postcard from Krissy, bill--

"Oh shit."

Cas comes out of the garage, shutting the door on the sounds of the washing machine. "What?"

Dean holds up two white, official-looking envelopes. "SAT scores."

Cas's brows lift. He comes over then, and plucks the envelopes from Dean's hand, putting them on the table.

"Hey," Dean protests.

"You were going to hold them up to the light," Cas says unrepentantly. "The girls will be home in fifteen minutes. Just hold your stallions."

"Horses, Cas. It's 'hold your _horses_.'"

Cas quirks Dean a glance that is all slyness, and Dean huffs out a laugh because Cas is always baiting him like that, and Dean is always falling for it. He snakes a hand out to hook two fingers between the buttons of Cas's Oxford, pulling him close. Cas lets himself be pulled, placing his hands on Dean's hips. He smells like Gain detergent and the cheap fruity air freshener that dangles from his Honda's rearview mirror.

"What do you want for dinner tonight?" he asks.

"What kind of question is that? Food."

Cas rolls his eyes. He squeezes Dean's sides, and Dean squirms, lets out a laugh. Cas smiles.

Dean grins back. "We should go out. You know, to celebrate." He motions at the two envelopes on the table.

"What if they didn't do well?"

Dean snorts. "Cas. Our kids are awesome. They did _great_."

Cas's intent gaze stutters for the first time, flicking away from Dean's, toward the floor.

"Okay," Dean says. " _The_ kids. Is that better? _The_ kids are awesome, and I know they did great."

Cas opens his mouth like he's about to say something, some protest, probably, about how it's not that he doesn't _want_ the kids, it's just that he doesn't think he has a _right_ to them, and that's when the familiar hiss and shriek of the school bus coming to a stop comes from outside.

Dean leans past Cas to grab the envelopes off the table and then tugs him toward the front door by the finger-hook he still has in his shirt.

 

Emma and Claire have just reached the porch steps when Dean opens the front door. "Well, hello, Things One and Two."

Emma and Claire both eye him suspiciously, then look at each other, then return even more suspicious looks to him. Behind them, the bus hisses back into motion and rumbles away down the street.

Dean holds up two white envelopes like he's holding up a royal flush. "Check out what came in the mail today."

Emma's stomach sinks.

Claire climbs the steps and takes her letter. She opens it carelessly, the way she does everything, because she's Claire and she probably scored a freaking 2400.

Sure enough, the corner of her mouth is curving into a satisfied little angle, and Dean, looking over her shoulder, lets out a whoop.

"Congratulations, Claire," Cas says where he's standing behind Dean, and he's not looking at Emma, but he's _looking_ at Emma; she can sense the mental message he's telegraphing Dean, like _be careful about being so enthusiastic about Claire when Emma might not have done as well._

Her stomach sinks lower. She accepts the envelope Dean hands her.

Dean looks at her expectantly. His arm's around Claire's shoulder; he's tugged her close in a hug of pride, and his other arm twitches, like he's waiting to pull Emma in, too. "Go on, kiddo."

Emma shakes her head. "I don't wanna open it yet."

"What?" Dean says. He lets go of Claire. "C'mon, Em, you did fine."

Emma shakes her head again.

"Dean," Cas says.

Emma bristles. She doesn't need Cas to fight her battles for her. Or feel sorry for her. Or, or--anything.

Dean looks back and forth between them. Concern and sympathy is starting to crease his face. "Em, if it's bad, we can fix it." Emma hates how gentle his voice has gone, like he feels sorry for her, too. "We'll get you some tutoring and you can take it again, no big deal."

Emma flattens the telescoped envelope in her hand. "I'm not _worried_ ," she forces out. "I just don't feel like finding out right now. Jeez. Low expectations much?"

Dean looks slightly convinced. Cas is still unreadable. And Claire doesn't look convinced at all.

Emma rolls her eyes at all of them and heads upstairs.

 

The next day, at school, she heads toward the electives hallway in the break between second and third period. She slips inside the bathroom no one uses because it smells like weed and there's always used condoms floating in the toilet bowls, and she tears the envelope and its contents into five short strips.

She crumples them up and stuffs them into the used tampon container in one of the stalls.

 

When the bus drops them off at home that afternoon, she knows a shit-storm is brewing the minute she steps through the front door behind Claire. Dean is sprawled across the couch in front of the TV, which never ever happens. At this time of day, he's either still at work, or he's outside working on his car, or Cas's, or the old Chevy Cavalier he keeps promising will be ready for Emma and Claire soon that Emma and Claire suspect never will be because Dean's goal is to keep them dependent on him and Cas for rides forever.

Claire doesn't seem to notice anything. She looks at Dean, then promptly heads upstairs, because of course _she_ doesn't have anything to hide.

Actually, she more likely heads up the stairs to perch at the top of them, because she's got twice the observational abilities Emma does, despite the Amazon thing, and she probably sensed the shit-storm from the minute they got off the bus, like some sort of invisible cloud boiling over the house that only Super Observant Claires can see.

Emma attempts to sidle after her, stubbornly quashing the urge to grab one of the loose straps dangling from the back of Claire's backpack.

But Dean clears his throat and says, "Have a seat, Emma."

He's pointing at Cas's armchair. Emma looks at it and hikes her own backpack straps tighter over her shoulders. "Actually, I have a lot of homework tonight--"

Cas enters the room silently from the kitchen. He's still in his work clothes, his tie not even loosened from his neck. His hair is tufted in several directions as if he's been dragging his hand through it. He sits in the loveseat across from the armchair and pats his hand gently on the cushion beside him.

Emma goes over and sits. The zippers on her backpack scrape the brown leather of the loveseat.

"I got a call this morning," Dean says. He's not sprawled anymore. Is standing up, actually, and Emma hunches her shoulders narrowed under her backpack straps. "The guidance counselor at your school wanted to know if you already took your SAT. _Apparently_ they got a message that your scores should be in, but there weren't any results in your record."

Emma doesn't say anything. She feels heat on the tips of her ears and wonders if Claire is at the top of the stairs, listening to all this. She glares at the carpet.

"Emma," Cas says quietly.

She raises her eyes to him unwillingly.

"Where is your letter?"

"I threw it out."

"What?"

Emma doesn't look at Dean. "I. Threw it. Out."

Cas says quietly, "Why would you do that?"

"Because I didn't take the test," Emma says. She feels spiteful.

"What do you mean, you didn't take the test?" Dean demands. "We dropped you off! I watched you go inside!"

"And I pretended to have to go to the bathroom and left."

"Why the hell would you do that?"

"Because I didn't want to take the test!"

"Why not?!"

"Because there's no point!" she shouts. "I'm not going to college!"

"And why the hell aren't you going to college?"

"Because there's no point!"

They're shouting at each other, by now. Emma is on her feet too, she and Dean glaring at each other, and Cas stands up, insinuates himself between them. A hand on Dean's chest, a hand splayed out in front of Emma. "Stop."

Dean breathes, hard, against Cas's hand. His face is twisted angrily, and Emma's face twists just as tightly in response.

"Like hell you aren't," Dean says finally, his voice a low scrape of gravel. He turns on his heel and shoves outside, thundering down the back steps. There's a crash, and then another, and then the Impala's engine, growling as it pulls out of the driveway.

Cas and Emma are both still as its roar fades from earshot. Emma's glaring at the closed door; Cas is watching her. She feels it, and very deliberately does not look back.

He says, "Do you wish to talk about it?"

" _No._ "

Cas doesn't say anything more. He steps toward her, and touches a hand gently to the crown of her head, and leans in to press a kiss against her forehead. Then he goes into the kitchen and starts making dinner.

 

Dinner is a silent, stormy affair. Dean comes back for it, his face thunderous, coming in the door just as Claire is setting the table and Emma, her guts in knots, is helping Cas carry the food from the stove. His return probably has more to do with the ten minutes Cas spends shut up inside the garage speaking in low, angry tones than with Dean actually being willing to forgive Emma, but it makes the knots in her insides loosen a little, anyway.

Dean glares at his plate the whole time they're eating. He doesn't even complain about them being instant mashed potatoes instead of from scratch the way he makes them, with milk and butter. Claire does, though, making pointed remarks about how these potatoes would taste much better if someone _else_ had been around to make them. Dean doesn't even seem to hear, moving the green beans around on his plate with his fork.

He doesn't speak until Emma gets up to scrape her plate's remains into some Tupperware because she barely touched it.

"Put your shoes on."

Emma turns from the cabinet, bristling.

"Don't," he says sharply, "argue with me, Emma."

"I'll argue with you if I want to," she retorts.

"Dean," Cas says. "What are you doing?"

"We're going to the bookstore," Dean says steadily, though he doesn't look at Cas.

Cas sighs. He pinches his nose for a moment, eyes closing tiredly, then looks up. "I'm coming as well."

Claire's looking at Emma. "I'll come, too."

 

That's how they all end up piling into the car on a Thursday night to drive to the bookstore in the big outdoor shopping mall fifteen minutes away. On the drive, Claire shoots Emma sympathetic looks that Emma wants no part of, staring sullenly out the window instead.

It starts to rain as they pull off the interstate, so that they have to pull up their hoods and pick through puddles on the way across the parking lot to the store.

Dean beelines for the employee desk and asks where the test prep books are. Emma flushes in humiliation; it's not as if they couldn't have figured that out, themselves. He didn't have to _ask_ someone to show them.

Cas has clearly come to the same conclusion. "Dean," he says, face disapproving as Dean heads back to them from the counter.

Dean ignores them both and heads past them into the stacks. Claire reappears from behind one of them, holding a book; she must have slipped away while none of them were looking.

"Dean, can I get this?" She holds out a book.

Dean takes it from her without looking at it or breaking his stride. "Sure," he says, and as she falls into step beside them, Claire shoots Emma a sly look. Emma tilts her head to see the bit of cover visible through Dean's fingers, and snorts despite herself when she sees it's a shrink-wrapped graphic novel with a hand-drawn picture of two half-naked guys on the cover.

The snort pulls Dean's evil eye back to her. She returns it as they stop in front of the ceiling-high shelf of  Barron's and CliffNotes books. "I'm going to the bathroom."

"Not until you've got your book you're not."

"Do you want me to wet myself?"

Dean glares at her. Emma glares back.

"Claire, go with her."

Emma's nostrils positively flare. "I don't need a chaperone!"

"Apparently you _do_ \--"

"Enough! Both of you!" Cas's voice is nearly a shout, and it makes both of them flinch and fall silent. Cas _never_ shouts. "Emma, you and I are going to take a walk. Dean, I don't care what you do, but do it quietly. Claire--you're free to do as you wish."

He strides past all of them, and Emma falls into step after him, pointedly ignoring Dean.

The minute they're around the corner of a shelf full of history novels, she bursts out, "He's being a dick!"

"You're not going out of your way to make it easier for him," Cas says. He keeps walking, stops when they're in the comic book section at the front of the store, near the bathrooms. Turns to look her in the eye, his intent and dark blue. "We would never judge your reasons for what you do, Emma, but it would help us to know what they _are_."

Emma doesn't say anything. She presses her lips together and steps around him, into the alcove separating the women's bathroom from the men's, and pushes into the women's one. She hears Cas's sigh behind her before she shuts the door.

She locks it and turns around. There's a window set high in the wall, above the sink. She gets a foot up on the basin, the sole of her boot squeaking against it, then boosts herself up to the window. The only thing keeping it shut is a latch on the inside; she unhooks it and wriggles through the small square opening.

She lands on a sort of roof lean-to thing that looks out over a Dumpster set behind a faux fence that opens out onto the parking lot. The distance to the Dumpster is sort of a high one, and if she wasn't an Amazon, she wouldn't be able to do it without breaking something, but she is, so.

She lands on the Dumpster's closed lid. From there, she climbs the fence to jump down into the parking lot, the asphalt still slick with slush, gleaming under the big sodium flood lights.

Most of the stores in the shopping mall are closed by this time of night on a Tuesday. She hasn't got much choice for loitering, aside from some sort of pipe shop, a Claire's, a Mexican restaurant, or the movies. There's nothing good out right now, but maybe she can sneak into another showing of _Guardians of the Galaxy_ to see the Hobbit trailer again.

She heads that way. She doesn't get much more than halfway across the parking lot before she spots a kid and his mom standing next to an old, old Celica. The kid's got his head tilted back, looking at the back tire, and the mom's looking through her wallet, shoulders slumped tiredly, and despite herself, Emma wanders over, her hands in her pocket and her jack hood up.

"Need some help?" she says gruffly.

The mom looks up. She's got limp brown hair, and there's dark circles under her eyes. "Oh," she says. "Thanks, but--it's a flat."

"I know," Emma says. "D'you have a spare? I could help you change it."

The mom gives her another weird look. The kid starts to chew on his knuckles. "Yes," she says finally. "Are you--are you sure?"

"Yeah," Emma says. "Here, is it in the trunk?"

Luckily, the lady's got a jack in the trunk, too, and some wrenches, or Emma would've had to go back to the Impala and face Dean all over again. As it is, it takes about ten minutes to pump the jack up, get the flat tire off and get the replacement on.

The mom looks slightly awed and alarmed, both, by how easily Emma grunts the heavy tires on and off, but Emma ignores it, keeping her hood up. She wipes her forehead when she's done, and wipes her blackened hands down her jeans.

"I--thanks so much," the lady says. "How can I--I mean--here." She tries to give Emma the lonely ten dollar bill from her wallet.

Emma shakes her head. "I'll watch you off," she says instead, and backs up, her hands in her pockets, as the lady, with one more glance at her, buckles her son into the car, then gets in herself and starts it up. The car trundles away, through the parking lot, back lights glowing in the darkness.

The kid is turned around, watching Emma through the back windshield. Emma raises a hand, like a wave. He doesn't wave back, just keeps staring at her.

Emma lowers her hand. She stuffs it deep in her pockets again, and heads toward the movies.

 

The drive back to the house from the bookstore is filled with the sort of silence that only comes when Dean is mad at Cas and Cas is mad back. When Dean's the only one angry, it's noisy--he makes pointed unhappy, disgruntled sounds to let everyone know it. But when Cas is mad at Dean back, it's a frosty _I'm not talking to you until you acknowledge you're wrong_ silence in which Dean is left to stew in his own juices. Right now, Dean is emanating _I can't believe you let Emma take off_ , and Cas is emanating _I am two minutes away from smiting you._

Claire sighs, and presses her cheek against the cold window in the backseat, feeling her cheekbone grind against the glass. Surreptitiously, she pulls her phone out of her pocket, cupping it under her hand in the darkness to shield the glow as she checks again to see if Emma's texted her anything.

There's still nothing. She slides her phone back into her pocket.

She figures if Emma went anywhere at the shopping mall, it was probably the movies. She'd decided not to share that information with Dean, not when he'd freaked out over Emma taking off, not when he'd nearly broken down the bathroom door at the bookstore when Emma didn't respond to them calling her name through the door.

Claire understands Dean has a hang-up over protecting his family, but seriously. If there's anyone in this family who doesn't need a bodyguard, it's Emma.

She'll probably text Claire when she gets out of her movie. Then Claire can sneak out of the house and steal Cas's car to pick her up.

Or, more likely, she'll get caught sneaking out of the house to go pick Emma up, and Dean will shout, and Cas will Thunderstorm Face back, and they'll all go to pick Emma up together so they can all enjoy the lovely, horrible silence of everyone being mad at everyone.

 

But when they pull into their driveway a few minutes later, someone's sitting on their front porch. They're too big to be Emma, and Dean tenses up immediately, his hand going inside his jacket as he slides out of the car, motioning to Cas and Claire to stay put.

The figure that eases to its feet is familiar, though, his hands coming up to show he's not holding any weapons.

Dean relaxes slightly, though he doesn't remove his grip from his gun. "Seriously, James? You couldn't call first?"

"We had to ditch our old phones," James says apologetically. "I didn't have your number."

Dean is making disgruntled sounds now, and tucking his gun back into his jacket, and looking around, as Cas and Claire get out of the car, too. "Where's Portia?"

A dog scampers down the porch steps around James' legs. It turns into a familiar, petite woman at the last one, her eyes dark and taunting. "Dean."

He just glares at her. He's been touchy about Portia and James since their spell turned Claire and Emma into four-year-olds. Portia smirks back at him, and looks past him at Claire and Cas, who are both getting out of the car. "Where's Emma?"

"Why do you care?"

"What, a godmother can't visit her goddaughter?"

"Sure she could," Dean retorts. "But we're not Catholic, and if we were, _you_ wouldn't be Emma's godmother."

Portia's eyes narrow. "And who would be, pray tell?"

"Charlie," Dean says at the same time Cas says, "Amelia" at the same time Claire says, "Me."

James rolls his eyes heavenward. Portia glares for a minute longer. "Charlie can have her." She points at Claire. "Emma's mine."

James gives Claire an apologetic look.

"Really?" Claire says irately. "You guys can't fight over Emma when she's actually here to see it?"

Portia looks over at Dean. "Where is she?"

He crosses his arms. "Sleepover."

"Uh-huh," Portia says. "On a school night?"

"That's right," says Dean. "'Cause I'm a cool, laidback dad who trusts my kids."

Claire has to smother laughter into her fist. She runs up the porch steps into the house, inside which she can be heard bursting into laughter as the door swings shut.

Dean deflates slightly. Cas sighs, and motions James inside after him. It leaves Portia and Dean on the dark front walk, in the pool of light from the porch lamp.

"All right," Portia says. "Go on. What'd you do now?"

"You know what?" Dean throws up his hands. "Why don't _you_ go find Emma. Let _her_ tell you what a shitty dad I am."

He storms inside.

 

James and Cas look up when Dean stalks past them through the dining room and up the stairs.

"Uh oh," James says softly.

Cas lets out a frustrated breath. But he continues to pull spare linens out of the closet for James and Portia.

"Should you…?" James nods up the stairs.

"No," Cas says, more clipped than he intended. He lets out another breath, upset with himself. "They both need space." He pulls a spare pillow from the bottom shelf and folds it under his arm. "Things have been very tense between the two of them. It's something that's been brewing for some time, I think."

James doesn't say anything. Child-rearing isn't exactly his area of expertise, and he seems keenly aware of that fact.

Cas sighs again. "Help yourself to anything in the kitchen," he says, and heads upstairs to make the bed in the guest room for James and Portia.

 

Portia finds Emma in a little copse of trees behind the move theatre. She's sitting on the freezing curb, her boots planted in the slush, when she senses the dog trotting toward her. She looks up, eyes easily cutting through the dark, and sees the familiar ears, the swatches of dark fur. "Portia."

Portia pushes demanding paws into Emma's lap until Emma's straightens her legs out far enough for Portia to jump up into her lap. Then she butts Emma's hand with her head until Emma starts scratching behind her ears, albeit with a grumpy glare.

They sit like that for a few minutes, Emma petting Portia and Portia reclining her head to and fro to allow new areas to be scratched. Then Portia rolls over, jumping from Emma's lap back onto the cold curb. A moment later, she's sitting next to Emma in her human form, wrapped up in a too-big gray sweatshirt and a knit hat with a red pom-pom dangling from it.

"Nice hat," Emma says, and Portia turns her head in a quick moment that slaps Emma's ear with the pom-pom. Emma sputters.

"Maybe I'll get you one for Christmas," Portia says.

Emma fidgets a little. She's talked to Portia, a little, or at least been talked _to_ \--every few months or so, a post card arrives in the mail addressed to Emma, a short sardonic message about whatever location the post card is from and a reminder to Emma to call if she needs anything, signed with a paw print.

It's sort of weird. But it also makes her feel kind of special, getting mail. Claire gets invitations from colleges and birthday cards and stuff from her grandparents, and Dean and Cas get bills and stuff, but this is the only thing Emma gets, that says she's here, that their house is hers, too.

"So," Portia says.

Emma shifts her butt on the cold concrete.

"Dean's giving you a hard time again, huh."

"Dean always gives me a hard time."

For someone whose other form is a dog, Portia's piercing gaze is unnervingly cat-like. "Do you always sit outside in the middle of the night with your butt in the snow?"

Emma digs her chin into her elbow. She takes a breath in, fits her mouth around the words.

But her chest gets too tight; the pressure slides up, and she bites down on the words instead, cracks them in two and swallows them down. Just because Portia's sent Emma a few postcards doesn't mean she's her fairy godmother. Doesn't even mean she's someone she can trust. Emma's just so desperate that she wants anyone, will take anyone, and that's a weakness she needs to squash before it gets her a shot to the head.

"Look," Portia says. "It seems like everyone has problems with their dad when they're a teenager. _If_ they're lucky enough to have a dad around to have a problem with."

Emma barks out a laugh. "Then I wish I wasn't that lucky."

Portia sticks her hands in her pockets. "Do you mean that?"

Emma doesn't. Not really. But she's feeling defiant, so she says, "Yes" with a viciousness torn from her teeth.

Portia doesn't say anything. She stands up, and flips her pom-pom over her shoulder, studying Emma.

"Do you want a ride home?" she says finally.

Emma doesn't, really. But she also doesn't want to call Claire; is mad at everyone right now, somehow, so she pushes to her feet, icy air hitting the damp seat of her jeans, and follows Portia to her car.

 

After he makes up the guest room with fresh linens for James, Cas goes to the living room and settles in with a book to wait for Emma. He doesn't turn more than two more than two pages as he sits there in the lamplight, with the night pressing on the windows, until car headlights bounce across the far wall.

He gets up and crosses to the front window, peering outside. Portia and James' most recent car, a nondescript dark green sedan, is parked in the driveway behind his own car, and Portia and Emma are sitting in the front seat. Cas can't make out much of their expressions, with the porch light reflecting off the windshield, but he can make out enough to see that Emma is stone-faced and Portia looks…contemplative.

"Uh oh," says a voice behind him.

He turns. James is standing behind him, his dark eyes trained on the same thing as Cas's.

"What?"

James presses his lips together for a minute. Then he just sighs and shakes his head.

Cas frowns at him for a moment longer. Then he turns back to look out the window. Portia and Emma are getting out of the car. He crosses quickly back to the couch, picking up his book, and James slips soundlessly back up the stairs.

Emma's nose is pink with cold when she lets herself and Portia inside with her key. Her eyes flicker up to Cas, and for a minute, she looks apprehensive. Hunted.

Cas gets up and goes to where she stands. He hands her the book that was beneath his own: the pornographic novel Claire tricked Dean into buying at the bookstore.

Emma looks startled when she sees it. Then her face breaks into a smile of uncertain relief, her eyes flicking up to his.

He squeezes her hand. "Good night," he tells her, and goes upstairs.

 

Dean is sitting on their bed. The reading lamp on his nightstand is on. His pajamas are on, too, flannel pants and an old gray t-shirt, but he's not under the covers. He's sitting tensely against the headboard, a car magazine open in his lap. He fiddles with its glossy pages and does not look up as he says, "She home?"

Cas says, "She is," and goes into the bathroom to change into his sleep clothes.

When he comes back, he reaches over Dean and turns off his lamp. Dean, in a rare display of self-preservation, doesn't protest.

"I wish," Cas says into the darkness, "that you could learn to love the parts of yourself that you see in her."

**  
**


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, when Emma comes downstairs, Cas is fully dressed and making sausage at the stove, speaking quietly with a rumpled-looking James. Claire sits across from him at the table, her Spanish textbook open in front of her bowl of Cheerios, mouth moving soundlessly as she studies. In Dean's usual seat is Portia, who has her knees drawn up to her chest and a steaming mug cradled in her hands. A few of her fingertips are dusty with something blue, like some kind of chalk, and when Emma glances at James, there's a glittery smudge of something similar in the stubble on his jaw.

She slouches into her chair. Claire glances up, their gazes meeting. Emma cuts her eyes meaningfully toward Portia's fingers, and Claire gives her a _I've got no fucking clue_ eyebrow in return.

That's when the shout comes from upstairs.

They all spin to look at the staircase. Cas drops the skillet on the stovetop and is actually halfway up the staircase when Dean comes thundering down them, his eyes wide and--

Emma stares.

"You assholes!" Dean shouts. He's got heavy dark eyebrows, and freckles splattered across his face, and he's a fucking _teenager_. "Turn me _back!_ "

James digs his knuckles into his forehead.

Portia takes a sip from her mug. "Sorry. Can't do that."

Dean gives another shout and charges at her. Cas catches him by the arms and hauls him back.

"Get--" Dean wrenches his arm; momentarily frees it before Cas catches it again, " _off_!"

"Stop," Cas says. He catches Dean again, arms hooked around Dean's own, and looks at James and Portia. "Did you do this?"

"What do you think?" Dean cries. He sounds surprisingly petulant, surprisingly young, and he seems to notice it, too; his eyes flick to Emma and Claire, and shame flashes across his face before he turns away, trying to wrench free again. "Who else do we know who turns people into kids?"

"Technically, you're eighteen," James says, glancing at Portia.

"Oh," Dean says sarcastically. "Great, I'm old enough to buy a pack of smokes, that makes this so much better. I swear to God, James, I'm going to rip your balls off--"

"Why?" Cas's voice cuts over Dean's. He's staring at Portia straight-on. "Why would you do this?"

"We have our reasons," Portia says.

" _You_ have your reasons, you mean," Dean spits at her. His glare slides to James. "I thought when you got into this you said you were going to be a good witch, not the kind that fucks up people's lives."

"Yeah, _we_ 're the ones who fuck up people's lives," Portia says, and Dean recoils like he's been slapped. He breathes hard in Cas's hold for a moment, arms taut and breath shallow.

"You know what?" he grits out. "Fuck you guys. I don't need your help. We had to figure out how to reverse this spell the _last_ time you used it. I'll just get some moonstone powder or whatever that shit was--"

James is looking away now. Dean stops, and his glare intensifies. " _What_?"

"The spell was contingent upon lunar cycles last time," James says after a minute. Reluctantly. "This time, it was more….economical…to ground it in Uranus."

A moment of silence. Then Claire and Emma explode into laughter.

Dean's face turns a dull red. It would almost be an adorable sight, if he wasn't so clearly and wretchedly miserable, standing there in his slightly too-large shirt and pajama pants, his hair fluffy and sticking up from sleep. Cas's arms come more tightly around him, almost protectively, and for a minute, he seems to lean back into Cas's hold before he realizes himself and pushes away. This time Cas lets him.

"How 'm I supposed to reverse that, then?" he says quietly.

"You're not," Portia says.

Dean is looking at James. There is still something very vulnerable in his face.

"It will wear off on its own," James says weakly. "Eventually."

"Eventually," Dean echoes. "James, I've got responsibilities. I've got a job. I've got bills--I  have kids who need food and clothes and a house to sleep in!"

The creases of laughter on Emma and Claire's faces slide away.

"Some forms of support are more important than the monetary kind, Dean," Portia says into the silence.

Dean's fists open and close at his side. He doesn't look at any of them, his eyes darting back and forth across the floor instead.

"You know what?" he says. "I do my best. I do my--my fucking best, and--if that's not enough, then--I'm sorry."

He pushes past them into the living room. There's the sound of him grabbing his keys from the front table, and then the door opening and slamming shut.

 

James and Portia are gone by the time the school bus drops Claire and Emma off that afternoon. Emma knows it's stupid, but she checks the mailbox for post cards anyway. There's nothing.

She avoids Claire's eyes as they walk up the driveway. The Impala is still gone, and Cas's blue Honda looks strangely lonely in the cold November sunlight, its trunk left open.

Cas comes out the front door, meeting them half-way and nodding at the open trunk. "I went grocery shopping. Will you two help me unload?"

He grabs several green re-usable cloth bags from the car's open trunk and starts back inside. Emma slings her loose backpack strap over her shoulder and follows Claire in grabbing the rest of the bags from the trunk. She gets the huge package of toilet paper in her arms and props her chin on it as Claire closes Cas's trunk and they head toward the porch.

"Wanna bet who he went to?" Claire says. "Ten bucks on Sam."

Cas comes back out the front door, taking the toilet paper from Emma. "Claire, please don't bet on Dean's distress."

"I'm _not_ ," Claire says, affronted, although she really was.

"He's with Benny," Cas says, ignoring her protest. "Thankfully, Benny texted me to let me know, or I was about to enlist Garth's helping in tracking him down, and I doubt anyone would have enjoyed that."

" _I_ would have," Claire says, and is ignored again.

 

The next day, Dean still isn't back. Emma, Claire, and Cas get up in mostly silence, and eat breakfast in mostly silence, and Cas drives them to school in mostly silence, except for the quiet NPR from his car radio. The worm of dread gnawing at Emma's insides gnaws deeper. She doesn't ask Cas if he's heard anything from Benny.

When they get home, the Impala is still gone.

Dinner is quiet, too. Afterward, Claire spreads her things out on the coffee table in the living room to study for a calculus exam, and Cas asks Emma to help him wash the dishes. He dries, and she washes, arms deep in the warm water. There's not a lot to wash, just her dishes and Claire's and Cas's. It seems like much fewer dishes when Dean's not here, even though he's only one person. Feels like there's more missing than just him.

 She remembers the earliest days in this house, when she and Claire first moved in with Dean and Cas. Back then she carefully scrubbed her own plate and silverware every time she ate, putting them away like she didn't want to leave any trace that she was there. Like if she didn't leave any smudges or waste or anything, they wouldn't have a reason to kick her out.

"Emma," Cas says.

The water is warm and sudsy. There is caked spaghetti sauce under her fingernails and floating bits of vegetable in the dishwater. "Mmm."

"This is not your fault."

Emma is quiet. After a minute, she goes back to scrubbing.

"Okay," Cas says quietly, and doesn't say anything more as he goes back to drying.

They're wiping down the sink and counter when there's the sound of keys at the front door.

They look up at each other. Move in silent agreement to the living room, where Claire sits on the floor behind the coffee table, watching the front door knob turn.

It opens. Dean lifts his eyes from where he's pulling his key out of the lock. He is still teen-aged, his eyebrows heavy but not heavy enough to hide his dark eyes.

No one says anything. Water drips from Emma's sponge onto the wooden floor. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Dean sticks his hands in his pockets. He shuts the door with his shoulder, and does the thing where he manages not to look at any of them. He makes a sort of grunting sound that is probably supposed to be a greeting.

Cas says, "Have you eaten?"

Dean shrugs.

Cas looks at Claire and Emma. Emma hands her sponge to him and she and Claire head up the stairs, loud footsteps until they get to the top, and then turn and creep silently back down, just far enough that they can hear but not be seen. Emma's hands are warm and soap-damp where she flattens them against her denim-covered knees.

For a long time, there's not much more to hear than the sound of Cas opening and closing the fridge, the beep of the microwave, and then the scrape of metal fork tines against ceramic. Dean doesn't seem to be eating his food so much as moving it around his plate, from the scraping sounds.

Finally, Cas says, "I'm glad you came back."

Dean doesn't reply for a long moment. Then, "This really sucks, Cas."

"I know."

There is more quiet. More scraping of Dean's fork.

"Why'd they do it?" His voice sounds very young. "I mean, I know--I fucked up with Emma. I always fuck up with Emma. But…"

Heat crawls up Emma's neck. She feels humiliated, in the cramped close quarters of the stairway with her leg pressed against Claire's.

Cas's voice is careful. "Perhaps Portia felt it might help you better appreciate how difficult this age is for her."

An exhalation. "I know that it's--I know it's all hard for her, Cas. But I don't know how to make that better."

Cas says something, too quietly for them to hear. Dean makes a sound, a sort of desperate attempt at a laugh, strangled.

Emma can't listen to any more. She gets up silently, unwedging herself from next to Claire, and runs up the rest of the stairs as quickly as she can without making a sound.

Claire follows her to her room. She shuts Emma's door quietly behind her, and Emma sits at her desk and pretends not to notice her.

"Did you ask Portia to do this?"

Emma shakes her head. But the guilt bites into her gums, sharp like her fangs.

Claire waits, like she can sense it.

"I wished not to have a dad," Emma says.

She can see Claire's face reflected in the dark screen of her laptop, over her shoulder. Her expression is unreadable.

"I," Emma begins. But she doesn't know what else to say.

After a long, long minute, Claire puts her hand on Emma's door knob. "You should be more careful with the things you ask for," she says, and leaves.

 

The next morning, when they come downstairs, Dean is sitting at the kitchen table. His shoulders are hunched forward, over a bowl of cereal, and there's an old Jansport backpack sitting next to his chair.

Cas glances up from over his own mug of coffee at the table. His expression is mild and yet, somehow, manages to convey a terrifying threat of extreme internet deprivation if either of them dares to say anything.

Claire plows right on ahead anyway. She looks at Dean's loose Metallica shirt, which is usually tight enough on him that he only wears it to work on the Impala out back, and the rolled-up hems of his jeans, and she says, "I don't think so."

Dean's shoulders hunch a little more. "What?" he says, defensive.

Behind him, Cas has a fierce _Claire, your adopted stepfather figure is in a delicate emotional state right now, stand down_ expression burning behind his reading glasses.

"You can _not_ go to your first day of school looking like Dursley-Era Harry Potter," Claire says. "As your temporary faux older sister, I can't allow it."

The tops of Dean's ears are starting to turn pink again. It makes his freckles stand out. "It doesn't matter."

"You're going to high school again to get the _good_ experience, right?" she says, like she and Emma didn't eavesdrop on him and Cas last night. "You're not going to make any friends going looking like that, I can tell you that much."

"Anyone worth befriending will not judge someone based on the state of their dress," Cas says stiffly.

"Uh, yeah, nice try," Claire says. "Maybe in Fictional Land, but we live in a place called Reality, USA. Everybody get in the car. We've got work to do."

 

Walmart is the only place open at seven-thirty in the morning that sells clothing, so Claire drags Dean off to find some jeans and t-shirts that fit while Emma and Cas loiter in the front of the store, nursing coffees from the tiny, fluorescent-lit McDonald's nestled in the front of the store. There's a bench in the front of it with a life-sized Ronald McDonald statue sitting in the middle of it with his arms spread out to either side, presumably for parents who would like to take commemorative pictures of their children's trips to Walmart, and Cas sits down on one side of it, leaning back against Ronald's arm as he sips his coffee.

It's only about fifteen minutes before Claire and Dean appear on the other side of the cashier booths, of which only one is open, manned by a twenty-something guy who looks like he is still asleep, right down to his eyes being closed as he swipes their items. It's funny to watch them: Claire only a few inches shorter than Dean, bossily pointing him toward the restroom with two of the bags, and sitting down on the bench beside them, scrolling through things on her phone until he emerges in his new clothes, having stuffed the old ones into the bag with the other new ones, which makes Claire scold him all over again and take them back from him.

The new clothes aren't much different from his usual attire, just a flannel over a shirt. But these ones don't hang over his elbows, and the jeans fit him decently this time, which may or may not be a pro, actually, considering the fact that the bowed shape of his legs is more evident now. It's somehow made even more exaggerated by the uncomfortable way he walks over to them, clearly unsure what to do with his hands, eventually settling on hooking his thumbs in his pockets.

"You look like a farmhand," Emma hears Claire say critically as they head toward her and Cas. Dean immediately drops them to his side again, then scowls before putting them back, defiant, like he can't believe he just listened to an 18-year-old girl for fashion advice.

Cas gets up from under Ronald's arm and goes to the McDonald's counter. By the time Dean and Claire reach them, he has cheap Styrofoam trays of pancakes for all of them.

They settle into a table in the corner of the deserted McDonald's with plastic silverware and soft drinks, and Cas produces two extra little cups of syrup for Dean, pushing it toward him with their knuckles knocking together, which makes Dean relax, a little, and push his knee against Cas's, until Claire clears her throat because. Um.

"What?" Dean demands. But he's already sliding his knee back over to his side of the table again, a flush creeping up the back of his neck.

"You know what," Claire says.

Dean turns a little redder. He forks a whole pancake into his mouth.

Cas just looks puzzled.

Claire sighs, as if unable to believe she has been burdened with the duty of sitting in the soul-sucking fluorescent lights of a Walmart McDonalds at seven forty-five in the morning and telling the super-old creature inhabiting her father's body that his affection for her much younger faux-father figure is kind of even more Fifty Shades of Gray creepy than usual. "You're, like, forty. Dean looks eighteen."

Cas considers this. Beside him, Dean is turning redder, and shoveling in increasingly bigger bites of syrup-soaked pancake. "My touch appeared inappropriate."

"Yup," Claire says.

Dean mumbles something that sounds very much like "I don't want him to stop touching me, that's bullshit," to which Claire replies, "Get over it, Twilight," earning her a glare. When they head back out to the parking lot and pile into the car, Dean climbs into the backseat after Emma, pointedly leaving Claire to sit in the front seat of Cas's Honda.

Emma looks carefully out of her window, only sneaking glances over at him when she thinks he's not looking back, and he's not, he's looking out the window himself, bottom lip drawn bloodlessly beneath his teeth.

 

When they get to school, it's only a few minutes until the tardy bell. Cas pulls up in front of the main office building and shoos the girls off. Dean gets out, too, pulling his practically empty backpack over his shoulder and looking up at the suddenly stupidly intimidating school building he's gone into a million times for meetings with the principal and various teachers about Emma (and occasionally, but much less frequently, Claire).

A slam of a door behind him draws his attention. He looks around to see that Cas has stopped the car, and gotten out of it, too. "What're you doing?"

Cas squints at him, adjusting his coat. It's weird to look at him for this vantage point, just an inch or two shorter than him, just enough to throw him off. "What do you mean?"

Dean looks at his watch. It, like Cas, is just slightly bigger than he remembers now, big enough to hang slightly loose on his wrist, knocking against the knobs of his bones. "You've got class in fifteen minutes."

"I asked Dr. Unjave to substitute for me," Cas says. He pulls a manila folder from the inside of his coat. "So we can get you enrolled."

Dean looks at the manila folder which, belatedly, he realizes must be the reason Cas was talking to Charlie on the phone while Claire and Emma finished getting dressed to go to Walmart. "You don't have to. Those're my papers, right? What fake name did Charlie give me?"

He reaches out to take them, and Cas lets him, but his expression is perplexed. "Your paperwork suggests you are my charge," he says slowly. "It is my responsibility to get you settled in your new environment."

Dean snorts. "Cas, I've been enrolling me and Sammy in schools since I was twelve. I think I can handle it."

Cas is still frowning. "It's not a matter of--handling it," he says. "The principal will be more receptive and helpful to you if she believes you to have a parent or guardian who is actively concerned with your welfare. I want to make sure she understands you are important."

Dean does _not_ get a warm squishy feeling in his chest. He holds the manila folder more tightly, and does not get an urge, either, to grab Cas's hand to hold as they walk up the front sidewalk.

(Except for how he really, really does.)

 

The name on the fake school transcripts and records Charlie must have faxed to Cas in record time are for a _Moriarty_ Winchester. Dean stares at the name in horror as Cas speaks quietly to the secretary to let her know they're there to enroll him as a new student.

"Moriarty?" he hisses in a low tone to Cas when he comes back to sit next to him in the chairs at the front of the office. "Did you put her up to this?"

"I had nothing to do with it," Cas says without a hint of guilt, but his poker face has always been fucking inscrutable, and Dean's warm fuzzy feelings give way to suspicion. Cas is the one who watches Sherlock religiously with Claire and Emma, after all. He spends the next ten minute studying Cas's profile for any sign of guilt until Principal Chan leans out of her office door. She, too, looks way taller in this form, even though Dean really can't have lost more than a couple inches.

"Moriarty?"

He cringes. Gets up with Cas, and from the outside, he truly looks like a teenage boy, skulking behind his adult guardian toward the principal.

"Mr. Novak-Winchester," Principal Chan greets Cas. Her eyes flit over Dean. "I have to say, this is an unexpected development."

"For us as well," Cas says. "Moriarty is the girls' great-cousin. His father had to go away unexpectedly on business and we all thought it best for him to stay with us while he is away."

"I see," says the principal. "Well, welcome, Moriarty. Do you like to go by Moriarty? Art?"

Dean thinks for a split-second. Then decides _fuck it_. "I actually like to go by Dean," he says. "It's my middle name."

Principal Chan raises an eyebrow, glancing back down at his paperwork. "Here it says that it's Sal…?"

Dean gives a forced laugh. "Yeah, but who wants that for a middle name, am I right? No, no, I go by Dean."

"Very well," Principal Chan says, looking like, in truth, she could really care less. She's leafing through the rest of his paperwork, glancing at his grades. Dean wonders, biting his lip, what sort of student Charlie made him into. "I'll make a note of it."

She continues to look through his papers, and Dean starts to sweat inside his brand-new t-shirt. For all his nonchalance with Cas outside, he hates this part of entering a new school, always did; the bullet-sweating fear, every time, that someone would ask the wrong question, would pry just a little too deep, would want to talk to Dad, or call a school where protective services had gotten involved. Even though none of those things are issues here, he can't shake the anxiety carved into his bones.

It was the same way when he and Cas came to enroll Claire and Emma. He can barely remember much of that meeting, really; that had been a panicked time, wondering what the fuck he was doing, thinking he had the right to try and raise two kids by whom he hadn't done a single thing right so far, and Claire just barely over having her jaw wired shut for those long eight weeks after being tortured by Naomi to smoke Cas out, and Emma still looking like she might take off any time he so much as breathed in her direction, and atop all of those, the fear that at any minute, Hell would rip open again, or Cas would disappear, or he'd let his eyes close, one night, and when he woke up, it would all be gone, would all have been just some really weird, hangover dream, and he'd be rolling over on a motel bed to grab a bottle from the nightstand to crawl back into again.

Despite the fact that Dean had told Cas back then, to keep quiet and let him handle it, Cas had taken care of most of that first meeting with Principal Chan. Most of his speech had been just one-word answers to questions, as Dean sat with his elbows between his knees, white-knuckling paperwork in his hands. It wasn't until afterward that Dean got more comfortable with dealing with the school, getting familiar with the secretary and then Principal Chan and Emma's teachers, first with disciplinary hearings for Emma and then for setting up supplementary tutoring for her, because apparently Lydia and her Amazons taught their kids how to sever femoral arteries but not how to use the Pythagorean theorem, or even what it was, and Emma was desperately behind and hadn't _told_ him about it instead of just falling farther and farther behind in her classes and skipping them in frustration--

"Dean?"

He blinks and focuses on Chan, straightening up. "Yes?"

She's still looking at him expectantly. He realizes she must have answered a question. "Uh, yeah."

Cas says, "She wanted to know how long you'll be staying here."

"Oh." Heat creeps up his neck. "As long as my dad has work, I guess."

Chan seems to accept his answer, and goes back to looking through his papers. Finally she sits back in her big squishy leather desk chair and regards him. "Well, we're pleased to welcome you to our school, Mr. Winchester." She smiles briefly, glancing at Cas. "As long as you're better behaved than your cousin, I think we'll get along quite well. If you'll head outside, Mrs. Costanza will take you to the guidance counselor to schedule your classes and get your ID."

 

The guidance counselor is a tired-looking, balding man whose eyes stay on his computer screen as he lists the electives Dean can take in a bored-sounding monotone. None of them sound like wood shop or auto shop. Dean shifts uncomfortably in his chair. "Don't you have any…dude classes?"

The guy finally looks away from his computer long enough to focus on him. "I don’t think I understand what you mean."

"Like…auto shop? Somewhere I can get dirty?"

"Due to liability, we no longer offer auto shop or wood shop. We do offer driver's ed."

Dean snorts. Cas gives him a quelling glance.

"We also have openings in drama," the counselor says, "and newspaper."

"What about Home Economics?" Cas has been looking through a little green pamphlet from the corner of the counselor's desk. He tilts it toward Dean, showing  several pictures of teenagers in aprons, cooking at stoves. "It says it allows students to practice cooking and other aspects of household management. This sounds like something Dean would enjoy," he tells the counselor.

Horrified red is spreading up Dean's face. " _Cas_ ," he hisses.

"What?" he says. "You enjoy cooking and caring for the house. This would allow you to spend time learning about something you enjoy."

Dean wants the floor to open up and swallow him.

"Great," says the counselor, sounding like it's anything but. He types a few things, and then a sheet of paper spits out of his printer. "Here's your schedule. One of the aides outside can show you to your first class. Have a good day."

He turns back to his computer. Dean stares at him for a second, gob smacked and indignant. Then, somewhat frantically, he snatches the schedule and stuffs it inside his jacket as he and Cas head out the door, desperate not to let anyone see the fact that he has _Home Ec_ on his schedule. Fucking Cas.

A pretty dark-haired girl in a shiny gold headband and pressed blazer in waiting in the office outside. She greets him cheerfully, introducing herself as the student council treasurer, and tells him to follow her to his first class, and despite being mad at Cas, Dean also flicks an _I'm freaking out_ look over his shoulder at him.

Cas gives him a reassuring look, his eyes blue and deep. Something inside Dean smoothes out, kind of, and he squares his shoulders and heads after Student Council Chick.

 

When Cas calls as he's driving to work, Benny picks up on the fourth ring. There is the sound of things frying in the background. "Well, if it ain't my favorite angel."

"Dean is going to his first class now," Cas says. "I thought you might like to know."

Benny laughs, low and unconcerned. The sizzling gets louder, the sound of something flipping in a pan, then recedes again. "So he decided to go to school till the spell blows out, huh?"

"Was he considering it when he was with you?"

"He was considerin' a lot of things," Benny says. "Mostly he was mopin' around bein' angry with himself. Takin' apart my truck and puttin' it back together, and whatnot."

Cas brakes at a four-way stop near the school, motioning a cyclist to go ahead of him. "Hmm."

"How's Emma?"

"Quiet."

Benny hums. It's a thoughtful sound, but most of Benny's thoughts about Emma he keeps between himself and Emma, and Cas appreciates that even as it sometimes makes him feel--he supposes the human word is _wistful_ , that Emma trusts Benny with so much more than she does him. "Y'all figure out anything more about the spell?"

"No. I asked Garth to keep an eye out. He'll be close to Lebanon in a few days, he said he'll see what he can find in the Men of Letters' library."

"Maybe I'll mosey on over there, too, if I get some free time this weekend."

"It's not as if it's urgent, or anything," Cas says dryly.

"Way I see it, it ain't," Benny says lazily. "We might end up wanting to send that familiar and her witch a fruit basket, soon enough."

"Says the one not forced to share close quarters with him and two teenage girls," Cas says.

Benny laughs. They say goodbye, and Cas's next call, as he pulls up to a red light, is to Sam. Sam answers on the seventh ring, and his voice is breathless, surrounded by the sounds of honking cars and moving people. "Cas! What's up?"

"Have you spoken to Dean recently?"

"No, I haven't had a chance." There's the sound of a slurp of coffee, and then Sam getting into his car. "It's been a crazy week, man, wait till you hear--"

"Sam."

Sam's tone immediately shifts at Cas's. "What is it?"

"Portia and James used an age regression spell again," Cas says. "This one less easily reversible."

Sam's tone is cautious. "So…are the girls stuck permanently this time?"

"They didn't cast it on the girls."

There's a moment of silence. Then Sam says, "No way. _Dean_?"

"Dean," Cas confirms.

Sam explodes in laughter. Cas scowls through the explosion, waiting for it to be over. He supposes he can understand the humor in the situation, but neither Benny nor Sam would be as relaxed about it as they are had they seen the discomfiture Dean has shown thus far in his adolescent form, his clear feeling of not fitting in his own skin.

"This is too rich," Sam says, finally. Laughter still clings to his voice. "I'm coming. As soon as I get out of work."

Cas's ire gives way to relief. "Thank you."

"Oh," Sam says. "My pleasure. Believe me." He laughs again, and then falls quiet, finally sobering. "How is he doing with it?"

"Not…horribly."

"So we don't know how to reverse it?"

"Portia and James intimated there was no way to do so. That the spell has to run its course."

"Which'll be how long?"

"Portia anchored the spell in a celestial power source," Cas says. "I haven't had a chance to find an accurate star chart to do calculations for it yet."

"I'll do it," Sam says immediately. "Which planet?"

Cas prepares himself for more laughter. "Uranus."

He isn't disappointed. A single, smothered snort of laughter escapes the other end of the line.

"Goodbye, Sam," he says dryly.

"Bye--Cas--" he gasps, and as Cas hangs up the phone, he hears Sam burst out into laughter again.

 

Dean's day starts with an English class in which the assignment is to write down five _tastes_ that characterize the novel the class is reading, and write a paragraph to justify each, which, okay, what the fuck. Dean spends the period flipping through the paperback pretending to read it and wondering if Claire has the same English teacher, and how bad an example it would set to find out what she wrote when he gets home and just paraphrase it for his own paper.

After that is a physics class that isn't horrible, but the history class that comes after it, in which they're told to write a three-page essay comparing the Mexican Revolution to the Russian Revolution _off the top of their heads_ , leaves him feeling like the stupidest waste of skin on the face of the planet. A bunch of kids less than half his age sit around him writing industriously away, and he just stares at his paper, eventually writing, _The Mexican Revolution is similar to the Russian Revolution because_

That's as far as he gets. He's careful to fold his paper up before he turns it in at the end of class so no one can see his pitiful effort, but the back of his neck still burns with shame as he walks out of the room with the stream of students heading toward the cafeteria. This was a stupid idea, one of his stupidest, and what's even the point of going to school to make his relationship with Emma less shitty when he doesn't even have any classes with her--

Someone clears their throat loudly. "You're holding up the line."

Dean's head snaps up. He meets the raised, expectant expression of one of the school cafeteria workers on the other side of a glass food guard. He looks back down at the red plastic tray in his hands.

"Sorry," he says lamely, and grabs one of the paper cups of sad-looking fries. The kid behind him jostles him as they make their way slowly, like a bunch of fucking cows, down the line, taking an equally sad-looking burger and even sadder-looking fruit cup to put on his tray. Dean grits his teeth to keep from turning around and telling the kid, who's yelling to his friend to grab him another cup of fries because today's dessert looks like shit to back the fuck up.

Dessert does look like shit, some lumpy pudding with Vanilla Wafers sticking out, so Dean skips it, heading straight to the cashier. He balances his tray with one hand to dig his wallet out of his back pocket, eyes flicking past the girls in  line ahead of him to see if Claire or Emma are anywhere in the bustling cafeteria. He doesn't see them, and he ignores the anxiety starting to thrum in his gut. He's been here, done this, before, the whole new kid eating alone at lunch thing, and it's not going to kill him to do it again. At least he's got decent clothes, this time, and doesn't smell like a mildewy motel room.

"Card," the lunch guy says.

"Uh," Dean says. Hands over a credit card to be swiped.

The guy looks at it. Looks at him. Raises an eyebrow.

Dean hooks a grin. "What, you only take MasterCard?"

" _ID_ card," the guy says.

"Uh." Dean flips through his cards until he gets to the one the guidance counselor handed him that morning, with fucking _Moriarty_ printed on it. "There's no money on it."

"Cash?" the guy says impatiently. Dean can feel the line starting to back up behind him, the jostling kid muttering, "Dude, c' _mon_."

His ears feel hot. He doesn't have any cash in his wallet right now, used it all up at gas stations on the way to Benny's because he didn't want to use his cards and have someone ask for ID."I--"

"Here," someone behind Dean says. "Put it on my account."

He turns to see Emma behind him. She holds her ID card out to the lunch guy, who swipes it and waves them both through.

"Thanks," Dean mutters as he squeezes after her through the mass of kids at the condiments counter. His ears are still on fire. "Sorry I--"

"No big deal," Emma says, cutting him off. "It's your money anyway."

Dean follows her through one of the sets of double doors that open into the cold courtyard. He doesn't speak again until they're nearly across it, chin tucked down into his coat collar. "Where's Claire?"

Emma shrugs.

"You guys don't eat together?"

"She's usually busy at lunch." Emma rounds the corner of the library. It smells a bit like cigarette smoke back here, plus the damp smell from the big climate control unit whirring in a fenced-off area behind the brick building. A few skinny, greasy-haired guys in baggy clothing kick a hacky-sack back and forth around a slushy puddle a few feet away. "Club meetings and whatever."

She settles down on the bit of concrete hugged up against the back wall of the library building and the AC unit. Tears open a ketchup packet with her teeth and squirts it onto the sad, floppy hamburger that's identical to Dean's.

He looks around one more time, then sits down next to her, balancing his food on his knees. Emma pulls out her phone and starts playing with it as she chews, and Dean follows suit, eating his food, awkwardly, looking around.

"How's your day going?" he says when the silence has gone for several minutes.

Emma puts down her phone. "Okay." She turns it over in her hand. "You?"

He shrugs. "Fine."

Emma nods. He nods, too, and Emma goes back to her phone.

A few minutes later, he says, "Who're they?"

Emma looks up, following his gaze to the group of kids lugging what looks like some sort of motor outside, setting it down on the stretch of cracked asphalt between the science wing and the library.

"Engineering kids," she says. "They're always out here doing…whatever it is they do."

"Huh," Dean says, and folds his hands over his knees.

"You can go play with them, if you want."

"They're not _playing_."

Emma rolls her eyes. "Fine. Tinkering, inventing, whatever. The point is, you can go sit with them."

"You too cool to have me hanging around?" Dean says. "Is this your subtle way of telling me I'm dragging down your street cred?"

"Yeah," Emma says, and Dean looks at her and can't quite tell if she's joking. She's looking at her phone, again.

"Nah," he finally decides, with more nonchalance than he feels. "I'm gonna sit here and bother you."

Emma doesn't say anything for a minute, though her eyes flick up to watch him from beneath her bangs. Then she rolls her eyes and says, "I'm gonna make Cas pay me for babysitting you at lunch."

"We already pay you," Dean retorts. "It's called room and board."

Emma flips him the bird.

"Winchester!" a voice shouts warningly from behind them, and Dean freezes automatically. Then he turns, slowly, and sees the teacher a few yards away is looking at Emma, not him.

"Don't let me see that again," the lady calls warningly, and Emma scowls but says, "Yes, ma'am."

She pointedly avoids looking at Dean for the rest of lunch. Dean takes his schedule out of his jacket pocket and unfolds it, smoothing it out against his knee and glowering at it. He has math after lunch, and _Home Economics_ , and if history was bad he can only imagine how bad math's going to be.

He sneaks a look over at Emma. She's glaring at her phone. He digs his chin harder into his knee and shoves his schedule back into his pocket.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Cas doesn't have any afternoon classes that day, only afternoon office hours, which he cuts half an hour short to make sure he gets to school in plenty of time to pick up the girls and Dean. Normally the girls take the bus in the afternoon, aside from the very frequent days on which Claire has extracurricular activities, but they all agreed this morning that Cas would pick them up in the car today.

Cas is slightly surprised that Dean didn't insist on driving the Impala, regardless of the argument he had ready that it would make people suspicious of why a teenage boy who looked so much like Dean was driving Dean's car on the same day Dean had called in sick to the garage. The lack of protest was another reason he's more worried about this age-regressed Dean than anyone else seems to be, aside from perhaps Emma.

Dean and the girls are waiting in the front, along with a bunch of mostly much smaller adolescents who must be freshmen. Claire's talking with a boy in a letterman's jacket, Emma's rocking back and forth on her heels with her hands in her jacket pockets, and Dean's kicking aimlessly at a the edge of the sidewalk. He looks grumpy, and Cas wonders what happened at school to make him look that way. The tip of his nose is also pink again, and Cas makes a mental note to make him wear a scarf tomorrow.

A look of tremendous relief flashes across Dean's face when he glances up and sees Cas's Honda. He beelines straight for it, sliding into the front seat and slouching down there, backpack between his knees.

Emma slides into the backseat. Claire stays outside a few minutes later, finishing her conversation with the boy in the coat, and Cas can sense the wish to get away reverberating from Dean.

"Emma," he says, "will you go remind Claire we need to leave now?"

Emma makes a displeased sound and climbs back out of the car. Cas reaches over and puts his hand on Dean's forearm. Dean tenses, for a minute, then relaxes, just a little, and leans forward to change Cas's NPR to some sort of old rock station.

Emma and Claire pile into the back seat.

"--little consideration," Emma is muttering as she scoots over to her side.

Claire makes a face at her. Then she turns her attention to the front seat. "How was your day, Dean?"

Dean makes a grunting sound not unlike the one Emma made when asked to go tell Claire they were leaving.

"So articulate," Claire says. "You belong on the football team, really."

"Claire," Cas says.

Claire makes a face at him in the mirror. "What? I'm expressing interest in his day."

"You were expressing interest in that football player," Emma mutters. "How articulate is he, huh?"

"More articulate than you," Claire retorts, and the backseat promptly becomes a battleground of retorts and verbal jabs that Cas tunes out in favor of tapping Dean's arm, once, gently.

Dean glances up at him from beneath those heavy dark brows that are strangely endearing. His bottom lip is drawn under his teeth.

"I spoke to Sam," Cas says. "He wished to come see you. He and Amelia will be here tomorrow."

A small breath escapes Dean. It's relief. "They're catching a plane?"

"I assume so," Cas says. "He also said he'll start researching how to reverse the spell today."

Dean relaxes even more, a smile breaking across his face. "He'll find a way."

"I don't doubt it," Cas says. "Would you like to discuss your day?"

Dean shakes his head. Cas doesn't push, and the rest of the drive home is quiet save for Emma and Claire bickering in the backseat--which is to say, not quiet at all, but nearly two years of living with them has taught Cas how to listen selectively. Dean turns up the music, anyway, drowning them out , and eventually they both go quiet, looking out the window.

"So?" Cas says as he turns into the driveway. "What are we doing for tonight?"

"Let's go out for dinner," Dean says abruptly. "I'm dying for a real burger."

Claire barks out a laugh as they get out of the car. "What, the ones at the cafeteria weren't real enough for you?"

"That food is reprocessed shit and you know it." Dean sounds like his usual self again, as though being back at their home has restored a great deal of his comfort and confidence. "Go drop your stuff off inside, we'll go now."

"It's like four o'clock," Claire says. "We can't go to dinner at four o'clock."

"I'm a grown man," Dean says. "I can do whatever the fuck I want."

Claire looks at Cas. "Should I point out the obvious?"

He just points at the house. Emma heads inside, but Claire waits a minute longer, sighing before heading after her. She stops at the top of the porch steps, though, and turns. "I have a date tonight."

"Ah," Cas says.

Claire beady-eyes him. "Ah what?"

"'Ah' nothing."

"Uh, hang on," Dean says. He's giving Claire his own beady eyes. "With who?"

"None of your beeswax."

"Uh, yeah, my beeswax," he says. "I have been and currently am a teenage boy, I know what kind of stuff we want when we go on dates."

"And I am a teenage girl who knows how to use a knife and always carries one in my shoe," Claire says. "I know what to do to anyone who tries to make me do something I don't want to do."

Dean looks stricken rather than proud. Claire rolls her eyes and goes inside.

"Cas," Dean says.

"Dean," Cas replies. "Can you blame her?"

"No, but--"

"Claire's need to have a weapon on her has far less to do with anything you have done than with my own actions," Cas says. "If you are going to blame anyone, please blame me."

Dean shakes his head. His hands are tight around his backpack straps.

Emma comes back out the front door. She's in her aviator jacket, the brown leather zipped up to her chin. "Are we going to that burger place by the mall?" she says. "Dean still needs clothes."

"Yes," Cas says. "That sounds like a good idea. Let's go."

 

After they eat, they head into one of the mall department stores. Dean wanders off on his own to pick out clothes and then heads into a fitting room to try them on, and Cas and Emma settle into chairs near it to wait.

"You can go look at clothing if you like," Cas offers. "It's probably time for you to have a new pair of boots."

"Maybe later," Emma says, and goes back to swinging her legs in her chair. Looking at her profile, Cas is reminded of the time he and Dean took the girls shopping when they, too, were de-aged, and Emma crouched near him listening to him read her the book about the creature that was a monster, a copy of which is now on a shelf in his office.

He smiles ruefully to himself, looking away. A part of him, inside, wishes that Portia's spell had returned Claire and Emma to their younger states rather than Dean, and he knows the wish is a selfish one.

Emma clears her throat.

Cas looks back over at her. "Yes, Emma?"

She squirms for a minute. "We might wanna add money to Dean's lunch account."

Cas is confused. "What?"

"We have to have money in our accounts," she says. "To buy lunch at school. Dean didn't have any."

Cas looks at her. Then, as she mumbles something about going to look at jeans and gets up, he turns to look at the doorway to the changing room.

Dean comes out a few minutes later with a couple of shirts and jeans slung over his arm and a scowl on his face, like he doesn't approve of the clothes he was forced to choose. He looks around. "Where'd Emma go?"

"She's looking at clothing," Cas says. "Dean, I'm so sorry you didn't have food for lunch."

Dean glances up at him. "Dude, it's okay. It's no big deal."

Cas's face twists. "It is. Food is important. I--"

"Cas," Dean says. "It's okay. Believe me. I used to go without lunch all the time when me and Sam were going to school."

Cas's expression becomes, if anything, more stricken. They stare at each other.

"Hey," Dean says. "You've had worse, right? Those, um--" He attempts a lopsided sort of smile that comes out more like a pained grimace. "When you were at the Gas'n'Sip, and stuff."

"That doesn’t make it better," Cas says quietly. "Dean, I never want you to go hungry again."

"Then I won't." Dean attempts another smile, one that actually comes out real, this time, and catches Cas's hand. Squeezes it. "Except when you try to make us eat that granola crap for breakfast. That stuff doesn't do anything but clean me out, man."

"That's the purpose of it."

"Exactly," Dean says. "I can shit just fine on my own, thank you very much."

"Ugh," Emma says, coming down the aisle with a box of tennis shoes under her arm. She hands it to Dean. "This is the conversation I come back to, really?"

Dean steps from the shoebox, holding up his hands. "Whoah whoah whoah, what're those for?"

"Phys Ed."

"Oh no," Dean says. He backs up a little more. "There are three things I don't do. Shorts, waitresses in Tampa, and tennis shoes."

Cas and Emma both make Bitchfaces at him.

"Dean," Cas says. "You can't wear your boots to your physical education class."

"Watch me," Dean says.

"I always do," Cas says mildly.

Emma winces the looks they give each other. There's entirely too much affection and entirely too little _stop being creepy_ going on. Not to mention the arm-holding that was going on when she came back. "You guys are going to get Cas arrested."

"Lay off, Emma," Dean mutters, ears going red, and marches toward the check-out counter, breaking into a sprint when Emma runs after him with the shoes.

 

When they get home, they empty the shopping bags out on the kitchen table so Cas can snip the tags from them with the scissors Emma uses to cut shampoo coupons out of the newspaper every Sunday morning. Emma wanders upstairs, saying something about homework, which Dean doesn't buy for a second considering it's a Friday night. He himself heads for the armchair in the living room window to glare forbiddingly outside in preparation for Claire and her date to return home.

"Her curfew isn't for another hour," Cas reminds him.

Dean grunts. "Where d'you think she got the knife?"

Cas places another screen-printed t-shirt in the laundry basket. "The Impala, most likely."

Huh. Dean considers the fact that he hasn't inventoried the Impala's armory in way too long. For all he knows, the girls could've pilfered everything in it by now. His hand goes down, comfortingly, to where his favorite K-bar is nestled inside his boot as he sits in the armchair. Then he slides off the piece of furniture, wandering back into the dining room and sitting down at the table next to where Cas is sorting the clothes.

"Hey," he says when he sees Cas take a blue-gray shirt with a screen-printed Captain America logo out of a bag. "I didn't pick that."

"I know," Cas says. "I did."

Dean gives him a weird look. Captain America's cool and all, but he thought Cas knew him better than that.

"It's for me." Cas takes another shirt from the bag, this one maroon and with an Iron Man logo. " _This_ is for you."

Dean grins.

Cas smiles back, soft and proud and fond. He lifts the laundry basket onto his hip. "Do you have anything else that needs to be washed?"

Dean shakes his head. He gets up to follow Cas through the kitchen into the garage, where the dryer and washing machine are. He watches the familiar slope of Cas's back as he leans over to start the water and pour the detergent. "Cas--" he begins.

He can barely hear himself over the rush of water pouring from the machine. He falls silent again instead, leaning against the doorjamb and scraping his socked foot uncertainly up and down his denim-covered calf as he watches Cas begin to put the items of clothing into the water.

When he's done, he shuts the lid and turns to face Dean. His eyes are very blue in the light coming over Dean's shoulder from the kitchen. He considers him.

Dean chickens out. "I'm gonna go watch some TV before bed."

"Dean--"

The sound of the front door opening comes from behind them. Cas's eyes flick over Dean's shoulder, and Dean turns to see Claire walking into the kitchen.

"Behold, safe Claire," she announces. "In one piece and utterly sober, plus only one small hickey. You're welcome."

She disappears up the stairs.

Dean and Cas stare after her, and then turn to look at each other. Cas cracks first, the side of his mouth pulling up into a smile. Dean tries to glower, but he starts to smile, too, instead. He steps backward out of the doorway, into the kitchen, and Cas steps after him, closing the door behind him. Dean leans against the counter, edge digging into his back, and takes a breath.

"Dean," Cas says before he can say anything. He looks up and sees Cas's eyes very intently and gently upon his. "If you would prefer, I can sleep in the guest room."

All the air escapes Dean in a rush. He can feel himself flushing, embarrassed that he's so transparent. "Cas--"

"Is that what you were worried about?"

Dean glares at the air over Cas's shoulder. It shouldn't be a thing, but it is. He doesn't know why. Just that he was relieved, last night, when he fell asleep on the couch in the living room and woke under an afghan Cas must have draped over him, and didn't have to discuss sleeping arrangements, and that his guts have been twisting in tighter and tighter knots all night the closer they got to bedtime. "You shouldn't have to--"

"Dean," Cas says. "None of this is about what we have to do. It's about what we choose to do." He takes fresh sheets out of the linen closet. "I will sleep in the guest room."

 

Dean feels weird in the bed that night, under their covers that feel bigger and heavier than he remembers. He feels like an intruder. Like he's not the same Dean that woke up in this bed two mornings ago with Cas's morning stubble rough against his shoulder.

It's been a long time since he's had to get used to sleeping in an unfamiliar bed. Several times, he nearly gets up to go get Cas. Every time, he clenches his fingers in the sheets and rolls over instead.

He wakes up early the next morning, in the big empty bed. It's only six-thirty, according to the alarm clock on Cas's nightstand. Dean slides his leg to the other side of the bed, bare foot feeling the cool empty sheets where usually his toes would encounter Cas's leg and run up the haired surface of it, against the grain, back and forth, until Cas woke up and grumbled morning breath into Dean's pillow.

He pulls his leg back to his side, and swings both legs out of bed so he can pad to the bathroom and showers quickly. He doesn't even need to shave, and he rubs his jaw ruefully, thinking of how many mornings he's thought about what he wouldn't give to have to use his razor every morning. When he gets his body back, he thinks, he's growing a beard. A full-on beard. Or at least a goatee.

Nah, goatees are too douchey.

Except for Iron Man. Iron Man can pull off the goatee look.

There's a text on his phone from Sam, letting him know their flight should get in at 9:25 a.m. Dean heads down the stairs two at a time, pulling the Iron Man shirt over his head. Faint music is coming from the living room; he pokes his head in on the way to the kitchen, and sees Emma in her pajamas on the couch, her blanket kicked half off her feet as a nearly muted Ninja Turtles episode plays on the TV.

"What's wrong?" he says instantly, going to press his hand to her forehead.

She withdraws, pulling her blanket to her shoulders. "Nothing."

He hesitates, sitting back on the arm of the couch.

"Are you going to pick up Sam?"

"Yeah," he says, and hesitates again. "You wanna come with?"

She hesitates too, for a second. Then she stands up, blanket hanging from her shoulders. "I should probably drive. Since I'm the one of us with a license that actually looks like me."

It sounds more like her usual self, and Dean gives her a _yeah, try another one_ look that is as much relief as sarcasm. He grabs his jacket from the hook and tosses hers to her. She pulls it on as she walks over and stuffs her bare feet into Claire's boots, which tells Dean a lot because Claire's boots are Uggs and Emma ridicules them every chance she gets, so he goes over to the couch and grabs her blanket and one of the pillows from it. As he troops outside with them under his arm, he feels like he really is a teenager again, carrying stolen motel pillows and comforters under his arm to put in the backseat so Sammy can sleep.

 Emma does conk out in the car on the way to the airport, though she does it in the passenger seat and not the back. He looks over at her, bundled up in her blanket with her mouth hanging slack in the bright morning sunlight, dark blonde hair pulled back from her sleeping face, and you'd think he'd be used to it by now, seeing her and thinking _that's my kid_ , but it still hits him like a punch to the gut, so often. Like waking up and realizing the dream he was in wasn't a dream at all.

She drifts awake when he pulls into the tightly winding roads that feed into the airport terminals, the centripetal force pulling her awake. She rubs her eyes, looking around and yawning.

"I fell asleep?"

"Nope," Dean says cheerfully, and receives a glare.

When they pull into the pick-up lane for Terminal B, they see Sam almost immediately. The back of his tall, shaggy head, and Amelia's darker one beside it. Emma tumbles out of the front seat as Dean gets out more sedately, with a swagger, pulling off his aviator sunglasses.

Sam just stands there for a second, staring at him. Then with a loud, bright laugh and an even brighter grin, he strides forward, grabbing Dean up into a hug. Dean finds himself simultaneously scowling into his shoulder and hugging him back, tight, his fingers curling in the back of Sam's stupid gigantor shirt. He smells like stupid lawyer cologne and stale airplane air, and his hair's soft against Dean's temple. He's huge and safe and Dean…well.

He pulls back, shit-eating grin firmly on. "What d'you think? Even better-looking than you remember?"

Sam huffs out another laugh. "Shorter than I remember."

Dean scowls. "Fuck you, Sam."

"Aaaaaand the angelic appearance is ruined," Amelia says. "Hey there, gorgeous."

"That's my line," Dean says, and accepts a hug from Amelia. He's about her height now, where before he sort of towered over her. "How've you been, Dr. Sexy?"

"Oh, you know," she says. "Living up to my name."

Dean grins. "I bet."

"All right," Amelia says. "Emma, you got a corner of that blanket for me?"

"It's kind of sweaty," Emma says. She's not making eye contact with any of them.

"Emma," Amelia says, unfazed. She gestures at Sam. "I sleep next to this hyperhidrotic monstrosity every night. I think I can take a little girl-sweat."

Dean fucking loves Amelia.

They get situated in the back seat, and Dean and Sam climb into the front. Sam's giving Dean a subtle little _what's going on with Emma?_ eyebrow, to which Dean gives the smallest shrug to mean _I have no fucking clue_ , and Sam gives him something like a Bitchface Lite, which Dean takes to mean **_why_** _don't you know, Dean?_ and Dean ignores it by starting the Impala's engine and pulling back into the furthest drive-through lane to get back to the highway.

He watches Emma in the rearview mirror when they hit a four-way stop, but she's curled up against her window, staring out it again.

He transfers his attention to Sam again. "So what's the news, Sammy? Cas said you were gonna look at a star chart."

"Yeah." Sam digs around in his laptop bag, bringing out a sheaf of papers. It includes a massive fold-out chart the size of a map, and Dean bats it irritably away from his steering wheel when Sam opens it up, earning him a full-calorie Bitchface. "So, Portia and James used Uranus as a power anchor-slash-source, right? Uranus's influence, technically, is strongest during the window of Aquarius. It's sort of…building in power until then all year, with its strength greatest during the Aquarius interval of the calendar, and then it's lowest right after that period ends."

"Aquarius," Dean says. "That’s in January. You're saying I'm gonna be like this until _January_?"

"February, actually," Sam says with a wince. "The eighteenth."

Dean groans. "I'm going to be like this during Valentine's Day?"

Amelia has a gleam in her eyes. "Is that going to be a problem?"

Dean throws her a dirty look in the mirror. "Maybe."

"I didn't think about that," Sam says in sudden concern. "How are you and Cas--"

"We're handling it." Dean cuts him off. "What I'm more concerned about is, what am I supposed to do with the garage for that long?"

"Well, fortunately you're the owner," Sam says. "So you can kind of do whatever you want--but yeah, you're going to need to make up some sort of story about being away for a while."

"You can tell everyone Sam's got mono," Amelia says, "and he needs you at his bedside to nurse him."

Sam gives Amelia a Bitchface.

She grins.

 

When they get back to the house, Cas and Claire are up. Claire's dressed in her Spanish Club t-shirt, and they've barely gotten inside when her friend Stacy's car pulls up outside with a honk. Claire runs out the door, stopping to say, "Hey, Amelia" and give her a hug, and also give Emma a swift, piercing look before clambering down the porch steps. "See you guys at dinner!"

Amelia looks at Emma. "Where's she going?"

Emma shrugs and heads upstairs, blanket trailing behind her like a cape. Amelia mouths, _What's going on with them?_ at Cas, who can only shrug.

Sam spreads out the star chart on the table for Cas as Amelia and Dean make toast in the kitchen, bringing butter and grape jelly from the fridge. Dean doubles back to bring peanut butter for Sam, who, of course, complains that it's the crunchy kind.

"Oh, get over it," Amelia says, cuffing him in the back of his shaggy head.

"You get over it," Sam mumbles around his mouthful of toast, and Amelia flicks him in the ear, this time, before sitting on top of him and shoving his greasy fingers away from the star chart.

Cas is studying the chart, making no move to eat his own toast. He's dressed, but rumpled, his hair still sleep-mussed, the imprint of their couch creases against his cheek. "So the spell is actually growing stronger right now?"

"Yup," Sam says.

Cas looks displeased. He sinks back into his seat, and Dean jogs his knee up and down in his own, sucking grape jelly from his thumb.

"The really sucky part," Sam says, "is Dean's an Aquarius, so Uranus has an even stronger pull on him."

He starts to chuckle. Amelia rolls her eyes, and Cas looks supremely unamused. Dean is snickering with Sam, even though he's bright red.

"Teenage boys," Amelia says. "Both of you." She elbows Sam. "At least Dean has an _excuse_."

Sam laughs harder, clutching his middle.

Cas ignores them both. "The most important thing is whether there is anything potentially harmful about this spell. Sam?"

Sam wipes his eyes. "Aside from the trauma of reliving adolescence? I don't think so."

Amelia has a shrewd look on her face. "Does this mean we need to give you the nocturnal emissions talk?" she asks Dean.

Sam bursts into laughter all over again. Dean lunges forward across the table and snatches the toast from both their plates, shoving it into his mouth in a crumb-spattering mess. He chews noisily, glaring at them both.

"Go on," Sam says smugly. "I licked mine."

Dean spits out the toast and gives Sam the middle finger. He grabs Cas's mug of coffee and drains it, swishing it in his mouth and making a face, then slamming it back onto the table. "Who even makes these spells up?" he rages. "What's the _point_?"

"To teach people lessons, probably," Sam says.

"What's the lesson here, Sam?" Dean gestures down at his de-aged self. "Huh?"

"Uh, I kind of figured it had something to do with _get a clue that your kids don't actually have it as easy as you think they do, Dean_."

Dean sputters. Looks at Cas, and then back at Sam, and then at Amelia for good measure, and then, involuntarily, his eyes flick toward the staircase.

Sam crosses his arms, leaning back in his chair.

Dean sighs and pushes away from the table. "I get it, okay?" he says. "High school sucks. It sucked the first time, but it sucks in different ways now."

"Okay," Sam says. His arms are still crossed, though his gaze is gentler. "Are we the ones you should be saying this to?"

Dean shifts uncomfortably. They don't get how things go with him and Emma--he can't just go up there and say, _Hey, Emma, sorry I was so hard on you about stuff._ Then she'll get all suspicious, and one or both of them will pick a fight, and God, this must have been how his dad felt with Sam, isn't it?

The thought makes his insides go kind of cold. He looks at his hands, for a minute, remembering the bruises on his wrists, that day he ended up at Sonny's.

He pushes away from the table and heads upstairs, taking the steps one at a time. Emma's door is closed. He leans against the jamb and knocks.

Her voice is muffled like she's under her blankets. "What?"

Dean licks his lip. Then--he chickens out. Instead of asking to come in, he says, "You doin' okay in there?"

"I'm fine."

He stands there for another minute, temple digging into the wood. "You want me to bring you some toast or something?"

"No."

He bites his lip. "Okay."

He waits another minute. Like maybe, magically, she'll open the door. But she doesn't, and he goes back downstairs.

 

When Claire gets home that evening, she has Charlie on speaker on her cell phone.

"Uh, excuse me," says Charlie's voice, slightly distorted from the speaker. "Why is NOBODY answering their phones?"

"I did," Claire says.

"Yes you did," Charlie says. "And for that you will be rewarded, my most loyal subject. Keep an eye on the mail for a package. As for the rest of you--cover your ears, Claire, dear--WHO THE HELL TELLS ME DEAN GOT TEENAGER-FIED AND THEN DOESN'T SEND PICTURES? WHO. DOES. THAT."

Amelia nods sagely where she's eating Twizzlers on the couch. "I felt the same way when it happened to Emma and Claire."

"Right?!" Charlie exclaims. "Me too. I'm still waiting for pictures of that, by the way."

A flash fills the room. Dean blinks rapidly, dots dancing in front of his eyes and clearing just in time for him to see Claire lowering her phone.

"Ah," Charlie says a minute later. "Thank you, Claire-bear." Then she squeals. "Dean! Where were you hiding those eyebrows?"

"Hang on a second here," Dean protests. "If we're going to be chewing each other out, can we talk about the stupid fucking name you gave me? Moriarty? Seriously?!"

"It's called metatextual, Dean," Charlie says, sounding hurt. "I know it's kinda obvious, but--"

"Obvious?" Dean says. "What the hell is obvious about naming me after a Sherlock villain?"

"It's not from Sherlock!" Now Charlie sounds offended. "I mean--yeah, it is, but no! It's from _On The Road!_ You know, the Kerouac character you were based on in Carver Edlund's books?"

"Who knows that?" Dean says. "Who would _possibly_ know that?"

Claire, Sam, and Amelia all raise their hands. Cas doesn't raise his, but he lifts a brow that says _I, too, knew this._

Dean groans at all of them.

 

After they finish talking to Charlie, the night is spent watching Sam's pirated version of _Guardians of the Galaxy_.

"You know, for someone who's a lawyer, you do a lot of illegal things," Claire remarks as they watch Rocket scramble up Groot.

"Some things are worth breaking the law for," Sam says sagely, and Amelia blows her nose loudly into a Kleenex as Groot's roots wrap around his family. Cas looks mournful, his eyes glued to the screen. Claire throws pieces of popcorn at both of them, and Dean looks over at the dark stairs, with the bar of yellow light falling down them from Emma's bedroom where she's still holed up.

 

After the movie, Cas makes the guest room up with fresh sheets for Sam and Amelia. They bid them good night, and Cas turns back toward the staircase. "I'll take the couch--"

Dean catches his hand.

Cas looks at it. Then at him.

Dean works moisture back into his mouth. "Um," he says. "We can share. I mean. It's no big."

Cas studies him for another minute. "Are you sure?"

"Would I have said it if I wasn't?"

"Possibly," Cas says bluntly.

Dean huffs and drops Cas's hand. They go into their bedroom, and Dean stubbornly gets changed into his pajamas in front of Cas, his ears burning red. He puts a hoodie on over his t-shirt, because it's that part of November when it's starting to get fucking cold.

Cas doesn't put a hoodie on, just shrugs on one of his gray Hanes t-shirts over his faded black sweatpants. His biceps cut clean lines from his short sleeves, the muscles shifting under pale skin as he pulls back the covers on his side of the bed and crawls under them, and Dean can't quite look away.

Cas pauses, seeing how Dean has frozen. He starts to get back out from under the covers. "Dean, if you don't--"

"No," Dean says, climbing into the other side of the bed hastily. "I'm good."

They lie there for a while. Dean can barely hear Cas's breathing in the darkness, it's so quiet; but then, it's always been quiet, ever since he first Fell. When they first started sleeping together, it was a while before Dean felt comfortable to slide a hand up onto Cas's chest, to his neck, to feel the reassurance of his chest rising and falling, his pulse beating, to reassure him Cas was alive. Was still there.

He turns onto his side and curls his fist into the fabric of the sheet.

A hand slides over his. Warm and callused and long-fingered. Dean swallows.

Cas's thumb strokes over his knuckles. "Dean," he murmurs. A prompt.

Dean swallows again. "I've got no clue what I'm doing."

Cas's thumb doesn't stop stroking. "With what?"

Dean lets out a hysterical sort of laugh. "Everything. All of it. Emma."

Cas is quiet for long enough that Dean might have thought he was asleep if not for the slow, soft touch of his thumb, back and forth. "Dean," he says finally, "you are not alone in that feeling."

A breath of a laugh escapes Dean. Not hysteria this time, though not quite humor, either--relief, though tension still holds it taut. He turns his hand over under Cas's, pushing his fingers between Cas's, and pauses at the way Cas's are larger than his own.

"Were we always this weird?" he says. The darkness is becoming easier to see in, his eyes adjusting to let him make out the silhouette of Cas's head on the pillow, the slope of his shoulder where he is turned toward Dean. "I always forget that you're…" Older. Bigger. Better.

"Do you ever wish you didn't?" he blurts out. "Fall. I mean--it's okay if you do."

Cas's hand slides free of Dean's. It comes up to rest against his cheek, and his thumb gently traces one eyebrow. Dean shuts his eyes.

Cas shifts forward on the pillow. His mouth brushes Dean's brow.

Dean relaxes. Cas's hand slides into his again, and Dean's fingers grip it tighter, more reflex than intention. Like a child, trusting.

He falls asleep.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

They take Sam and Amelia back to the airport around lunchtime the next day. Dean feels a strange sense of loss, dropping them off. Objectively, he knows he'll see his brother again before the spell wears off--Thanksgiving is coming up, and Christmas after that--but maybe it's part of this body, the one that was still conditioned with a need to know where Sammy was, at all times, to be close enough to get to him quickly if needed.

He stops at a drive-through to grab lunch on the way back, and pulls into the empty parking lot of his garage half an hour later. The office is empty, too, which is why he waited until today to come in--Cas called Dean's manager, Vince, on Wednesday to let him know Dean would be away for the rest of the week, but they're all expecting Dean to be back tomorrow.

Dean goes through that week's orders, casting a glance across the cars up on jacks in the garage section, making notes on several of them, and picks up the phone.

Vince answers after a few rings. "Dean?"

"Hey, man." Dean tries to make his voice as deep as usual. "How's it going?"

"Fine." Vince is a man of few words, gruff in a way that reminds him of Bobby and Benny both. He managed the garage before Dean bought it, and Dean hasn't once regretted keeping him in charge, especially when it lets him do more mechanical work and less worrying about the business end of things. "How you feelin'?"

"I'm fine," Dean says. "I've got family sick, though--I have to go to Texas, not sure how long I'll be there."

"Sorry to hear that," Vince says. He makes a groan, like he's getting up from the couch. "You wantin' me to hold down the fort?"

"Yup."

"Reckon I can do that," Vince says. "We'll have to push back a few of our orders, is all. Anythin' else I can do?"

"Keep an eye on Joey, I guess," Dean says. "Make sure he doesn't drop any cars on his head."

 

Cas has classes all afternoon on Monday, so he won't be able to pick them up, but he drives them to school in the morning anyway, dropping them off at the front office. Claire heads toward her biology class, Emma sets off to history, and Dean, with a grimace, heads for English.

The instructions on the board this time say, **Draw three objects you think most strongly represent the themes of _Wide Sargasso Sea_. Then write one paragraph about each of them.** There's a stack of white computer paper on the empty desk next to the board. Dean sighs, taking one, and settles into a desk in the back of the room. He spent Sunday night actually skimming through the book, which wasn't like anything he had ever read before but did remind him a little bit of the case he worked in New Orleans on his own, before he went to Stanford for Sammy.

He doesn't like it, doesn't like the uncomfortable ways in which the burning woman in the attic makes him think of his mom, burning up to right that poltergeist in their own house, and he doesn't like thinking, either, about what his mom would think of what a shitty dad he is. She'd be a lot better with Emma than he is, except for maybe the part where she might have tried to kill her, what with her being a hunter and Emma being part-Amazon. He tries not to think about that, has got enough of his dad's disappointment and anger in his head for that, used to wake up from nightmares, those first few months after he and Sammy took Emma in, of his dad in Sammy's place, holding the gun on Emma, except he didn't stop and set it down; he took the shot, and Emma crumpled to the floor, blood spreading red on her pink shirt, and John gave him the disappointed disgusted look Dean can't quite picture in his head anymore but can _feel_ , the beaten-in memory of looking down, of shame, of guilt, and he can't bear to think of his mom doing the same thing; has to think that she would give Emma a chance. He has to think that she would love her and forgive her, because if she wouldn't forgive Emma who'd never done anything wrong, never torn the tongue from a screaming soul in Hell or cracked open its ribcage or squeezed its eyeballs out of its skull,  how would she ever forgive him?

"Moriarty?"

Dean looks up. The teacher is crouched next to his desk.

"Yea--" His voice comes out a croak; he clears his throat and tries again. "Yeah?"

The teacher doesn't look any less concerned. "Are you all right?"

"'m fine," Dean says. Starts sketching something quickly: clumsy flames from a stupid triangle of a house. "Sorry."

The teacher doesn't look convinced. But Dean's been working this circuit since he was six; he flashes him a smile, and says, "Just think this assignment is stupid, is all."

The teacher rocks back on his heels. He doesn't quite look angry, more just disappointed, and even a little hurt, and Dean ignores the little lick of shame in his gut as the guy goes back to his desk and is quiet for the rest of the period.

 

At lunch, he skips the food line and asks around for Claire instead. Eventually, he's directed to the language wing and a room with flamenco skirts and festive-looking hats pinned to the walls. There's about two dozen kids milling around inside, some Spanish-looking dishes laid out along the back wall with paper plates and napkins, and Claire is at the front of the classroom behind the teacher's podium, saying something in Spanish.

Everyone looks up when he comes in. He shuts the door as quietly as he can beside him, crooking half a hopeful grin at Claire when her eyes land on him. She inclines her head and doesn't stop talking; he slides into a desk at the back of the room, next to a bowl of guacamole.

He catches about every fourth word of what she's saying, enough to tell that he thinks they're talking about a bake sale and some sort of competition. After about ten minutes, she stops and trades places with the dark-haired girl who took Dean to his class the first day, who starts talking in English about contributing photos for the scrapbook committee.

When the meeting breaks up another fifteen minutes later, Claire comes over to his desk. "Decided to learn a Romance language to impress Cas?"

"Ha ha," Dean says. "Didn't realize you were so good at it."

"We started learning Spanish in sixth grade at my old school." Claire pours some Tostitos onto a paper plate and pops one into her mouth. "It was that or take another Bible Studies class for elective, so I told my mom I wanted to challenge myself with a new language."

"She was big on that, huh?" Dean says, watching her. Claire doesn't talk about her parents very often. "The whole challenging yourself thing."

"More so because I was an only child, probably," Claire says. "I was all her eggs in one basket, so--" She shrugs.

"Huh."

"Which is why," Claire says, pushing her chips toward him, "Emma is lucky to have me."

"That so," Dean says. He takes a chip and dips it in the guac.

"Obviously," Claire says. "You'd be a lot harder on her if I wasn't around."

Dean chews, studying her. Then he pushes his chair back, standing up.

Claire leans back in her desk to tilt her head at him. "Where're you going?"

"Are you busy every lunch?" Dean says. "With--" He motions around. "This stuff."

Claire's face suddenly becomes a lot more impassive. "I've told Emma she's should come. She never wants to."

"Then make her."

Claire's impassive expression gives way to a sardonic smile. "Oh, Dean." She stands up and pats him on the shoulder. "How much you still have to learn."

Dean glares at her. Then the bell rings, and he grimaces all over, realizing he won't have a chance to find Emma before class.

"Hey, Claire, does your cousin need help finding class?" Student Council Girl is winding her way through the desks toward them. She touches Dean's elbow, smiling.

"I don't think he does, Beatrice," Claire says lazily. Her eyes are knowing. Dean glares at her, trying to figure out her game.

"What?" Beatrice says with another grin. "Don't tell me you're going to skip class again?"

Dean looks at Claire.

She shrugs. "Guess I should've told you we can see the back of the gym from the Spanish classroom."

"Yeah," Dean says, embarrassed and annoyed and stupidly, stupidly angry with himself. "Guess you should have."

"On the other hand," Claire says, "you should've been in class. Setting a good example for your cousins, and all."

Dean glares at her. Her friend steps between them, bumping his shoulder with her own this time. "All right, settle down, ladies."

"I'm down," Claire says sweetly. "What about you, Moriarty?"

Dean glares at her harder. "See you on the bus," he says shortly, and yanks his backpack over his shoulder to head to the math class he skipped on Friday.

 

Nearly every seat is filled by the time he gets there, barely in time to beat the tardy bell. He stops in the doorway, scanning the room, and blinks when he sees Emma sitting in a desk in the second-to-last row. She's got her chin on her chest, slouched down in her chair as she messes with her cell phone, which he decides some restrictions are going to need to be placed on because he barely sees her without it here, and maybe she'd actually have some friends if she'd put it down for two seconds. In front of her, a kid is sleeping, ear buds trailing from his ears, and behind her a guy has big bulky headphones on, mouthing along and tapping his foot to the beat against the legs of Emma's desk, and on her other side a kid has some off-white clay that he seems to be shaping into a bong-sized cock on top of his desk.

The door opens behind Dean again. He sidles out of the way, sitting in an empty desk in the front row, as a guy in a sweat shirt and jeans walks past him to the teacher's desk. He plunks down a stack of copied worksheets on the edge of it, says, "Due at the end of class," and rolls his chair over to his computer.

Dean kicks his backpack under his desk with one foot, looking furtively around like if he makes too much eye contact someone will notice he wasn't there Friday and call him out for skipping. But barely anyone seems to be paying any attention; half of the kids don't even make a move to go get their worksheets, just slump deeper into their desks and go to sleep, or pull out i-whatevers and start pressing their screens. Emma is one of the kids who does go to the front to get a worksheet, which gives Dean a surge of pride. He twists around to watch her open her math book, ignoring the kid with the Play-Doh penis who's started to trace details into it with the pointed end of his pencil.

Dean gets up, gets a worksheet, and walks back to the kid with the big earphones, who's still tapping his foot against Emma's desk. "Hey." He kicks his foot. "Trade."

The kid pulls one earphone off halfway. He looks like he's about to say no until Dean steps on his foot.

"Fuck you, man," he mutters then, and grabs his stuff from his desk, shuffles up to Dean's and sits, pulling his earphones back on.

Dean plops down in his seat. Emma looks over at him. Her first expression is _what are you doing here_ and her second is a grimace.

"I'm doing the work," she says in lieu of a _hey, Dad, how's it going?_ "See?"

"Yeah, I do see," Dean says. "What I'm wondering is how the fuck you're doing it, since that asshat's not _teaching_ _shit_." He raises his voice for the last part of it, trying to be heard by the teacher on the other side of the room. The guy doesn't seem to notice, turning a page in his magazine, and several of the kids around them snicker. Dean flips the guy his middle finger only, again, to go unnoticed. He's not amused so much as pissed off, because Emma worked her ass off to pass her first two high school math classes, and now she's sitting here getting ignored by some lazy-ass sports coach who's probably using Emma's class time to plan game strategies.

"Seriously," he says. "Is this how it's been all year?"

"This is slow kids' math," she says. "Our test scores don't matter at the end of the year."

Dean makes another smothered rage sound and glares down at his worksheet. He turns to the corresponding chapter in the book and starts to work through the example problems. A few minutes later, he says, "Okay, I figured out how to do number two."

He slides his notebook toward Emma. It takes a minute of her frowning at him like _are you for real_ , but finally she leans over to look at it, and they spend the rest of the period like that, puzzling out how to do the worksheet problems one by one.

 

Halfway through class, Emma plugs her earbuds into her phone and gives him one to stick in his ear. They listen to Blue Swede on repeat until the bell rings and Emma takes their worksheets up to the front to turn in, leaving Dean to wrap her ear bud cord around her phone and put it back in her backpack.

It's not until Dean's slinking into a bathroom, afterward, to hide out during the period that's supposed to be Home Ec, that he realizes that was what having friends during school must have felt like.

 

The bus loading zone at the end of the day is a madhouse. Dean had thought the cafeteria at lunchtime was bad, but this is way worse, and with adolescent kids in four-wheeled machines of death zooming out of the parking lot past the buses. He glimpses the familiar glint of Claire's white-blonde hair amid the crowd of students and starts pushing his way toward her. Emma's darker blonde hair is visible next to her; he catches up to them just as they're climbing up the metal bus steps, Claire in front of Emma.

"You found us!" Claire exclaims, twisting slightly around under her absolutely huge backpack to see him. Emma grunts at the sudden stop and thumps her backpack with a fist to make her move again.

"Was I not supposed to?" Dean says. He really doesn't understand Claire sometimes.

"I thought maybe you'd be off smoking weed somewhere," Claire says serenely.

"Punch her backpack for me," Dean tells Emma.

" _Ow_ ," Claire says.

Dean has to duck his head so it doesn't hit the ceiling of the bus as they trundle down the narrow aisle. The front rows are all filled with smaller kids: freshmen, he imagines, whose classrooms are closer to the bus-loading zone.

Claire drops into the first open seat near the back of the bus, hauling her backpack off and setting it in her lap; Emma slides in after her, plopping down. Dean's left to pile into the seat behind them, stuffing his backpack in the space between him and the half-open window.

Claire turns around in their seat, planting her elbows on the back of the seat. "So, in case you weren't able to tell, Beatrice is interested in you."

Dean grunts.

"What?" Emma says.

"Dean showed up to the Spanish Club meeting," Claire says. "Everyone was staring at him instead of listening to my State of the Union, it was super inconsiderate."

Emma doesn't say anything. She looks out the window, instead, and Dean feels like a deserter, even though Emma was the one who kept trying to make him leave her alone at lunch on Friday.

"Anyway," Claire goes on, as if noticing none of the tension. "She wants to know if you have a girlfriend."

"Dude, I have a _ring_."

"Yeah, 'cause you see a guy in high school wearing a ring and the first thing you think is that he's married," Claire says. "Maybe let's come up with a better cover story, boyo."

Dean glares at her. He can't exactly say _you're being a jerk_ to his own (sort of) kid, but he's sorely tempted.

"Claire Novak!" comes a shout from the front of the bus as the vehicle gives a shudder under them. "Turn around and face forward!"

Claire makes a face and slides down in the seat, facing forward as the bus rumbles into motion. Dean shoves his backpack more securely against the side of the bus, lodging it there with his knee, and looks around.

Half the kids are talking, and half of them are conked-out or as good as, ear bud cords dangling down their fronts. It's that part of a November afternoon where the sun is warm but everything else is still cold, including the metal of the bus around them and the fake leather of the seats; the sky is very blue and Dean feels a sudden urge to drink hot chocolate.

When they've been on the road for a few minutes, Claire inches up again, just far enough to peer over at the seat at him. "No, really, what are we going to do about this girls-wanting-to-date-you thing?"

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Ignore it?"

"I think we should tell them you have a long-distance boyfriend," Claire decides, completely ignoring him.

Dean looks out the window. He gets a sick-hot feeling in his stomach at the thought of it, at the thought of people knowing he likes guys, even though it's common knowledge when he's an adult. It's different, in high school. Even if it's maybe just his own hang-ups, the fact that when he really was this age, things were different, and there was his dad, and--

His eyes, darting restlessly around, catch on Emma's. She's turned, slightly, in her seat, too, her eyes on him. There's something too sharp in her eyes, and Dean looks away. He takes his history book out of his backpack as they bounce over a pothole and pretends to read about the Cuban Missile Crisis the rest of the way home.

 

Cas doesn't get home until nearly eight that night, looking tired. Dean jumps up from where he's sitting at the table with his history book and laptop for his essay to start reheating the stew on the stove.

"You don't have to," Cas says when he sees what Dean is doing.

"I want to," Dean says stubbornly, and shifts from foot to foot at the stove as he waits for the burner to heat up. Cas sits heavily at the table and just stares at the tablecloth for a moment before rubbing his eyes and pulling a binder-clipped sheaf of papers from inside the laptop bag he set down next to his chair.

"How was your day?" he says as he looks for a pen.

"Fine," Dean says. He stirs the stew, watching Cas's tired movements from the corner of his eye.

"Good," Cas murmurs. He lifts his reading glasses from the chain they hang around on his neck to push them onto his nose and begins to read the first essay in the pile.

He murmurs a _thank you_ when Dean sets the bowl of stew down next to him a few minutes later, but otherwise doesn't look up from his work. Dean settles back down in front of his work, across from him, chewing on his pen and glancing over his laptop screen at Cas's bent head every few minutes.

Around nine, Cas straightens. "I'm going to bed," he says, a little blearily, and carries his dishes into the kitchen. Dean hears him put them in the dishwasher and start it. A kiss is dropped to the top of his head, making him start, and then Cas is shuffling past him in his socks, up the stairs.

Dean watches him disappears upstairs. He forces himself to work on the essay for a few more minutes, finally just banging out some bullshit about presidential power and checks and balances and a line about it that he's pretty sure is from Schoolhouse Rock. Then he shuts his laptop, leaving it out so he'll remember to print the essay out before school tomorrow morning, and heads upstairs.

In their bedroom, Cas is already asleep under the covers. Dean eyes him from the bathroom door as he brushes his teeth, the light from the open doorway falling across Cas's t-shirted shoulder and the back of his dark hair, but Cas doesn't stir, not even when Dean flushes the toilet or crawls into the other side of the bed.

Dean flexes his toes for a second, considering pushing them across the invisible line in the center of the bed and pushing them against Cas's foot. Considers just sitting up, and scooting carefully across the center of the bed, and pressing his mouth to the corner of Cas's.

Instead he sighs and turns onto his side, his back to Cas, and goes to sleep.

 

The next day goes well, though. _Too_ well. He gets his three pictures and paragraphs back, with a little red _A_ and a _well done_ written at the top, which leaves him stunned for a good three periods. His eyes keep flicking to the front pocket of his backpack where he folded the paper up and stuffed it; he wants to take it out and look at it again, but at the same time, is certain that if he does he'll see the grade will have magically changed to a _C_ , and he manfully resists the urge all through the morning.

Emma stops short when she rounds the corner of the library at lunch and sees him sitting there. "What? No clubs to go to?"

Dean scoots over to make room for her. "I'm not really the extracurricular type."

"How will you get into college without extracurriculars?" she says snarkily.

"College ain't on my bucket list."

"Funny," Emma says. "It's not on mine either."

Dean shifts his butt on the cold pavement. He wonders how the fuck she stands sitting out here in fucking November, then remembers: Amazon.

He sighs. "Look, I don't wanna fight, Emma."

"That's a change."

"Yeah. It is."

They look at each other for a minute. Then a hacky sack sails through the air and lands on top of Dean's fiestada pizza.

Dean looks at it. Then he looks over at the hacky sack kids. "Oh shit," comes one of their voices, reedy in the cold wind. They look terrified, like Dean's going to get up and kick their asses.

He sighs again. Pulls the sack out of his foot and throws it back at them. The shortest one catches it, looking stunned.

"Thanks," calls another of them, the dark-haired kid that Dean's seen watching Emma when he doesn't think anyone's looking.

Dean waves dismissively. "Whatever."

When he turns back around, Emma's squinting at him. It makes her look like Cas, the times he's trying to figure out why the hell Dean just did whatever he did.

"What?"

"Nothing."

After a minute, she sits down next to him and tips half of her fries into his tray.

He glances over at her. "Really?"

"Your money," she says with a shrug. "Remember?"

Dean bites his tongue and picks up a fry. ~~~~

Two hours later, he's just settled down on the cement behind the science building after math to finish _Wide Sargasso Sea_ when a shadow falls over him.

He looks up. And groans.

 

Cas comes into the main office in a gust of cold air, unwinding his scarf from above his dark wool coat. Dean leans back on two legs of his chair; the principal says, without looking up from her desk, "Four on the floor, Mr. Winchester."

He thumps back down.

Cas enters the office. His tired eyes, flicking to Dean, are mild before they go to the principal. "Good afternoon, Ms. Chan."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Novak-Winchester," she returns dryly. "I'd hoped I wouldn't have to call you about Moriarty so soon."

"As did I," Cas says. "Dean?"

"I might've been skipping class," Dean says. "Which the nice principal here coulda just punished me for and let us deal with instead of calling you," he says meaningfully, glaring at the principal.

"I thought it best to nip this early with parental involvement," Chan says. "Since my initial warning didn't seem to make any difference to you."

"Sure it did."

Chan gives him a _don't give me bullshit_ look. "Can I trust you to take care of this, Mr. Novak-Winchester?"

"Dean and I will discuss it," Cas says firmly.

Chan doesn't look like this was exactly the answer she wanted, but she clears her throat. "The usual punishment for skipping class is detention. None of our teachers are available for lunch detentions this week, so your detention will be tomorrow afternoon, providing you can obtain transportation."

"We can," Cas confirms, and sounds weary.

 

Dean gets sent to class after that. Which is just--really fucking ridiculous, is what it is, because if Chan was just going to make him finish out the day, she should've waited until the end of the day to call Cas, instead of pulling him out of work. Dean fumes, and Cas sighs as he heads back to his car, and Dean gets escorted by one of the office aides--a gangly kid with an Afro, not Beatrice--to the Home Economics classroom, where a row of five-pound bags of flour sit lined up on a table at the front of the room and a pair of familiar hazel eyes look back at him from the back of the room.

"Um," says the teacher, looking as startled as Emma does. "Hello. Is this Moriarty?"

"Yes," Dean grits out, and immediately feels bad for growling. The teacher's a few years younger than his real age, and her belly is round with pregnancy.

She recovers quickly, though, raising an eyebrow. "Hello, Moriarty," she says. "I'm Mrs. Jablowski. You've picked a good time to join the class--we're starting our semester project today."

"Great," Dean says, still unable to help being sarcastic, and slouches into the back of the room, taking the seat next to Emma.

She eyes him. He avoids her look, sliding down in his chair and glaring at the front of the room.

"All right," Mrs. Jablowski says. "I know we already talked about this a little at the beginning of the year, but in case you weren't listening. These are going to be your babies." She places a hand on one of the flour bags. "You'll partner up with a classmate, and your job is to keep the baby safe and happy until the end of the semester. Each week, you'll receive a new assignment for things to do with your baby. This week, your assignment is to decide on names and draft a family budget including expenses like diapers and formula. Next week, you'll receive jobs and salaries and have to adjust your budget to fit it, and explore supplementary jobs and incomes if necessary, depending on the jobs you're given. Eventually, we'll move into taxes and insurance and college saving plans. Do you have any questions?"

A girl near the front raises her hand. "What happens if something happens to our baby?"

"You fail."

Everyone stares at Mrs. Jablowski, who looks quite grave.

Then the corner of her mouth kicks up, a little, and she says, "Kidding. You won't fail. You'll just have to do a very time-consuming twenty-page report on the stages of child development to make up for it. Plus possibly give me a foot massage. So guard your babies with your lives."

She smiles brightly. "Now. We can choose your partners randomly, or you can choose them yourselves. Hands up if you'd rather choose for yourselves."

About half the hands in the room go into the air. The teacher counts, then has the other half raise their hands. Choosing partners themselves wins by a very narrow margin, and Dean sinks further into his seat. He hates this sort of partner selection.

Emma doesn't move from her seat, and no one comes over to talk to her, either, as people mill around the front of the classroom grabbing each other's arms. There's far more girls in the class than boys, and several that haven't partnered off into girl-girl couples yet are glancing in Dean's direction, laughing behind their hands.

Dean sits up when one starts to move toward him. "Wanna be partners?"

Emma looks at him. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," he says.

"That's kind of weird."

"What's _not_ weird about our lives right now?"

Emma concedes to this with a shrug. "Okay."

They head up to the front of the room to claim a flour baby.

Mrs. Jablowski writes their names down on her clipboard. One of the guys behind them in line says, "Dude, Mrs. J, you know they're related, right?"

"Oh?" she says, deadpan. "I hadn't picked up on that from their last names. Thank you, Orlando."

Emma grins. Dean kind of thinks he knows why Emma is in this class, despite Home Ec being the furthest thing from what he'd imagine her liking.

"I'm just saying," says Orlando. "Isn't them having a kid, like, incest?"

"Hmm," says Mrs. Jablowski. She hands Dean the flour bag with a Post-It note that says #12 on its front. "Here's your incestuous flour baby, Ms. and Mr. Winchester. Enjoy."

" _Dude_ ," says Dean in a low voice as they head back to their desks. "Is she always like that?"

Emma's smiling at her feet. "Yep."

 

Claire's eyes go wide and delighted when they get to the bus that day and she sees the bag of flour under Dean's arm.

"Oh my God," she says. "It's flour baby time?"

Dean can see only bad things coming from Claire getting her hands on the flour baby. He tightens his elbow around it.

"That thing better not spill on my bus," the driver says, spotting it as they file past her into the narrow bus aisle. Dean gives her a reassuring grin that she responds to with an unimpressed expression.

"So, wait," Claire says. She sits in a seat behind Dean this time, draping her hands over the back of his, and Emma plops down next to Dean instead of next to her. "Does that mean you're in Home Ec?"

"Yes," Dean says edgily.

"With Emma?"

"Yes."

Claire makes a dismayed sort of sound, slumping down the seat. "I feel so left out."

Emma looks slightly smug. "You had your chance."

"Yeah." Claire doesn't say anything more, after that, and Dean twists around to see her with her chin against the back of the seat, staring at the flour baby with actual, honest-to-God wistfulness.

He sighs. Gets up out of his seat and squeezes past Emma's knees into the narrow bus aisle, and nods Claire into his seat. "Go on."

She looks up at him. Then she climbs over the seat to sit next to Emma and the flour bag.

"Claire Novak!" shouts the driver. "Did you just climb over that seat?"

"No, ma'am!" Claire shouts back, and laughter ripples through the bus. The driver shakes her head, one more time, stern face visible in the big mirror, and shifts the bus into drive. Dean drops down into Claire's seat just as they rock forward.

Claire's twisted sideways in her seat to examine her flour nephew. "Sooooo, who's going to name it?"

 

The argument over what to name the flour bag is still going when Cas gets home at seven-thirty that night, which is great because it means Cas is distracted from talking to Dean about the whole skipping class thing. They're spread out across the living room with bowls of macaroni and cheese, Claire on the couch and Emma across the armchair, and Dean upside down on the loveseat, burping just as Cas opens the door.

"Ugh," Emma says.

" _Gesundheit_ ," Claire says. "Cas, will you please tell Dean and Emma they need to name their flour baby Albus Severus."

"I'm not naming my kid after fucking Albus Dumbledore," Dean says, outraged.

"You didn't like Remus Sirius either!"

"I'm not naming him after Harry Potter characters!"

Cas looks bewildered. And also tired, his waistcoat thoroughly creased and his hair mussed as though he's run his hand through it several hundred times. "What?"

"Dean and Emma are in the same Home Ec class," Claire says. "They have to raise a flour baby to show they can be responsible adults for a grade." She points at the coffee table, where the bag of flour sits next to the TV remote and the DVD case for _Labyrinth_ and also Emma's laptop, on which Charlie's face is visible within a Skype window.

"Hey, Cas," she says, waving.

"Hello, Charlie," Cas says, still sounding somewhat bewildered. He shuts the front door behind him. "I…am going to go get dinner."

"Okay," Claire says. They resume arguing as Cas heads to the kitchen. There's a pot on the stove, likely from the macaroni and cheese they made, but it's empty except for some cheesy residue, so Cas opens the refrigerator instead, and finally pulls an apple and a cup of yogurt from inside. He fills a glass of water and drains it, leaning against the kitchen counter, before going back into the living room with his apple and yogurt.

The group is still arguing. "--venger, it's going to be Tony Stark," Dean's saying.

"I don't know," Charlie says, squinting. "He looks kind of like a Bruce Banner to me."

They all look at the flour bag. On closer study, it does, in fact, look somewhat menacing, yet with a hidden air of emotional vulnerability hinted at by the forlorn wrinkle at its top corner.

"If we call him Bruce, we get to make Batman jokes, too," Claire says.

"Better idea. _Jason Todd_ ," Dean says.

"What, so when the project's done we can take a crowbar to him?" Claire says, and gets Very Angry Looks from everyone else.

Dean shifts around on the loveseat to make room for Cas to sit, propping his feet up on the back of the couch so that he's nearly upside down again. "What do you think, Cas?"

Cas peels his yogurt open, leaning away from Dean's socked and none too fragrant feet. "I think it should be Emma's choice. She is, after all, the one who actually attended the class."

"Ooh," says Charlie. "Burn."

Dean feints forward like he's going to push the laptop shut. Charlie shrieks, and Claire kicks him out of the way. He rolls under the coffee table, and Cas sighs as his apple rolls off the couch cushion onto the floor after him.

"All right, Emma-Jem," Charlie says. "What's your verdict? _Please_ pick Mara Jade. _Please_."

Emma looks back and forth between them. Her forehead is creased. "I don't know what to name it."

"C'mon," Claire says impatiently. "What would you name your real kid?"

Emma scoffs. "I'm not going to have real kids."

A miniature silence falls. "Why not?" Claire demands.

Emma looks a little panicked. "I'm not parent material."

Claire looks like she has a whole lot to say in response to that. Cas cuts her off by saying, "Dean, would you hand me the dictionary?"

Everyone looks over at him, distracted. Dean wriggles out from under the coffee table, looking similarly confused. "Why--"

He gives him a Look.

Dean sighs and wriggles the rest of the way out, pushing to his feet and jogging out of the room in his socks to grab the dictionary from Cas's office. He brings the huge red book back and drops it heavily onto the cushion next to Cas.

"I have an idea," Cas says. "Emma, why don't you choose the child's name from this?"

Emma slides off the couch. "What, like--close my eyes and point a finger?"

"Yes."

"That's dumb," Claire begins, but Emma's already walking across the room to hunker down onto her knees in front of the loveseat. She closes her eyes and opens up the dictionary, then stabs her finger into a page.

Cas leans over to see the word she chose. Dean leans over him, and reads:

"Callipygian: having shapely buttocks."

Silence reigns for another moment. Then Dean, Charlie and Claire erupt in laughter.

 

After everyone turns in, Emma rolls over in her bed and stares at the ceiling. She chews on her lips. She pulls one of her pillows over her face and tries to inhale the scent of her own shampoo.

She gets her phone off her nightstand and plugs her ear buds in and tries to fall asleep to the Captain America instrumental soundtrack. Then the Avengers one. Then Harry Potter.

Finally she gets up. She opens her door quietly and pads down the stairs and turns on the TV. She settles  on the couch with a blanket, jamming her back against the armrest and her heels against the cushion like she's digging in for a storm. Callipygian sits there on the coffee table, next to her closed laptop, and she stares at it because there's a cooking knife infomercial on the screen. She stares at it, traces each letter of the flour brand's name on the bag. Then she crawls out of her blanket to pick it up and tucks it into her lap with her blanket, curling around the comforting weight of it as the knives flash and cut on the TV.

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

When Dean slouches into the detention classroom Wednesday afternoon, the room's empty except for a kid dressed all in black slouched over a desk, sleeping, and a big beefy man in a yellow polo shirt who's sitting at the teacher's desk, frowning at his computer screen. He glances up when Dean comes in, glances back down, then up again. His gaze, above his mustache, is fairly inscrutable for a dude with a mustache. Dean's eyes immediately go narrow.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," the guy says back. Looks at his computer screen, scrolls down what looks to be his e-mail inbox. "Winchester, Mo…riarty?"

It doesn't matter how many times he hears it; every time Dean wants to sink into the floor. "Unfortunately."

"Take a seat."

Dean does. And takes out his homework, and fiddles with it, and pretends not to notice that the guy's looking at him, again. Then, after a few more minutes, in which the Three Days Grace on the other kid's headphones gives way to My Chemical Romance, he says, "You need somethin'?"

The teacher doesn't even look embarrassed at being caught out. "You got any experience wrestling?"

Dean blinks. "Uh…yes?"

"What school?"

"Uh…Sonnyfield," Dean fibs wildly. "In…Rochester. Real small school."

The teacher grunts. Then he says, "I got a proposition for you."

 

When Claire arrives in Cas's car two hours later to pick Dean up, she's grinning. "How was detention, sweetie?"

Dean slides into the passenger's seat. "The wrestling coach recruited me."

"What!" Claire yelps. Then she eyes him suspiciously. "I'm not a wrestling expert, but isn't their season, like, half over?"

Dean shrugs. "I guess one of the guys got staph?"

"Ugh." Claire pulls out of the parking lot. "And you wanna join them in that gross infested locker room? On those gross infested mats?"

Dean had thought this too. But--"He said he'd get me out of Home Ec."

"Oh." Claire falls silent for a moment. "So you're gonna leave Emma alone with the flour kid?"

Dean does feel a twinge of guilt over that. But… _Home Ec_.

"Deadbeat dad," Claire coughs, none too subtly, and Dean would punch her in the leg if she wasn't driving.

He turns to look sullenly out the window instead. Mutters, "I'll stay until the stupid flour baby's done."

They drive in silence for a few minutes. Then Claire says, "What's your big problem with Home Ec, anyway? It's cooking and child-raising and all the stuff you love."

"It's gay," Dean mumbles.

"Oh my god," Claire says. "I know you didn't just say that."

"Fine," Dean says. " _People_ think it's gay."

Claire makes a dismissive sound. Dean ignores her. He knows acutely well the stupidity of the statement he just made, but it doesn't change the fact that guys who cook and take care of kids and all that other stuff Home Ec is known for are seen as girly dudes by like ninety percent of the population. And while he could give less than a fuck about it in his real form, he isn't so old that he's forgotten how absolutely shitty it felt to be called "fag" and "cock-sucker" when he was in high school for real. He's got no wish, and no plans, to repeat the experience.

"You're kind of a coward," Claire remarks, after a while.

"Yeah," Dean says.

 

At home, there are two Domino's boxes sitting on the kitchen counter. Emma's nowhere to be seen, nor the flour baby, and Claire heads upstairs.

Dean beelines for the pizza boxes, feeling slightly hurt. It's not _that_ late. They could've waited for him to get home before eating.

The light is on in Cas's little shoebox of an office off the kitchen. Dean goes to lean against its doorjamb, a slice of pizza folded into a pizza taco in his hand. Cas is hunched forward over an assortment of folded papers on his desk, his hand curled tightly in his hair, the way it does when he's thinking really hard.

"Whatcha doin'," Dean says.

Cas starts. He turns in his chair.

Dean gives him a grin full of pizza. "Honey, I'm home."

Cas lowers his hand from his hair. He looks even more tired now that Dean can see his face instead of just his tense shoulders, the dark circles under his eyes and the rumpled lines of his collar. "How was detention?"

Dean shrugs. "Got head-hunted. The guy running it was the wrestling coach, he wants me to join the team."

"Do you want to join the team?"

"Uh," he says. "Kind of, I guess. I did it for a while back in…" He waves his hand, "real high school."

Cas hums noncommittally. Dean hesitates. If everything was normal, he would come closer, would slide a thumb down the nape of Cas's neck and massage the side of it, lean over his shoulder to see whatever it is he's doing that's got him so stressed out. But things aren't normal, so. "Cas…you okay?"

Cas nods, but his smile is tired. "I'm fine, Dean."

"You don't look fine."

Cas rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. He turns back to his desk reluctantly. "The finances aren't coming together quite as neatly as I hoped."

A swoop of guilt and apprehension in Dean's gut. "Because I haven't been at the garage."

"It's my own fault as well," Cas says. "I've missed a few classes over the past week, and it's going to affect my earnings." He hesitates. "I don't think we'll be able to make the next payment on the girls' pre-paid college accounts."

"I can drop out," Dean says immediately. "They need people at that construction site off Highway 115--"

"No," Cas snaps.

Dean's eyes widen.

Cas closes his eyes, compressing his lips. He grips the arms of his desk chair, pushing back slightly from the desk, and opens his eyes to look straight at Dean.

"I don't wish for you to do that. Please."

Dean keeps staring at him. Cas shifts uncomfortably and draws his feet under the chair.

"Please," he says again. "I'll find a way to take care of things."

Dean stares for another minute longer. Then, carefully, he sinks down onto his haunches next to Cas's chair. "Cas."

Cas doesn't look at him for a moment, avoiding his gaze. Then he sighs and meets it.

"Me being…like this." Dean motions down at himself. "It doesn't take away any of the responsibility I have."

Cas's hand comes up to Dean's jaw, his thumb just barely brushing the bolt of it. Dean leans his head into it, and Cas's head tilts, too, as he looks at Dean, his expression pained.

"The girls weren't wrong when they said you didn't get a chance to be a child," he murmurs.

"They weren't completely right, either," Dean says. "I've been a kid, Cas. One of the worst things about it is how useless you are. Don't ask me to be useless here. Please."

Cas looks down. Dean slides his hand up his leg and squeezes his knee. "Please, Cas."

Cas takes a deep breath. Then he covers Dean's hand with his own.

"Perhaps," he says quietly, "we can find some sort of compromise."

 

"Dean," Emma says at breakfast the next morning. "You have to take Pyg today."

"Don't call him that," Dean says automatically. Then, "What are you talking about? Leave him at home."

"You can't _leave him at home_ ," Claire says indignantly. "What kind of parent are you?"

"The kind that didn't actually give birth to a bag of flour," Dean retorts.

"That's not the point," Claire says. "The point of the project is you're supposed to _do_ things with the flour baby. How does it grow and learn unless it's exposed to stimuli?"

"It's _flour_ ," Dean says. "The only growing it's going to do is growing mealworms."

"False," Claire says. "That's spontaneous generation and it was proven false forever ago. Did you even take Biology?"

Dean looks around at Cas for support. Cas takes a very large bite of bagel and becomes very absorbed in his lesson plan.

He turns back to Claire. "So what are we supposed to do?" he demands. "Carry him around with us all day?"

"Uh, yeah," says Claire. "Did you not read the grading rubric?"

"Did _you_?" Dean retorts, which Emma could have told him was a stupid question.

" _Yes_ ," Claire says. "I checked it over for Emma to make sure she wasn't missing anything."

Dean shoots Emma a betrayed look. She crosses her arms over her chest and says, "It's your turn to take him."

"I can't. I have to be somewhere after school."

"So do I."

Everyone glances up at this. Except Cas, who continues to chew his bagel.

"Where?" Dean and Claire demand.

Emma's glare grows more fierce. "None of your business."

"Fine," Claire says after a minute. " _I_ 'll take Pyg for the day."

"No! We’ll get points off."

"How's Jablowski going to know?" Dean says.

"She'll _know_ ," Emma insists.

"Dean," Cas says, finally swallowing his bagel. "I think you can take my grandson with you."

They all blanche.

"Ew," Claire says. "Please, _please_ never call him your grandson again. That's just--oh God. This family is so messed up." ~~~~

Anyway. That's how Dean ends up taking his bag-of-flour-child with him to the garage after school that afternoon.

Vince stares him down when he comes in from the work floor to meet him, wiping his hands on a rag. 'So you're Dean's nephew?"

"Yup," Dean says. "I know, I know, he's way better-looking."

Vince snorts.

"What d'you know how to do?" Vince asks. "Your uncle called me last night and said you could do pretty much anything we needed, but I need to know what you can actually do. Was he bein' honest? I'm not gonna judge you if you just wanna do oil changes."

"Dude," Dean says. "Don't stick me with oil changes, man. Anything my uncle can do, I can do."

Vince gives a disbelieving chuckle. "Oh yeah?"

" _Hell_ yeah," Dean says with feeling.

"All right. I'll give you a test drive, then."

Vincent takes him over to an '89 Celica, which--Dean is offended, but he guess if some smart-ass kid sauntered into his garage one day claiming to be able to do anything, he wouldn't let him start with any car that wasn't a piece of shit anyways.

About half an hour into his work, Joey comes over, hollering, "Hey, Boss-Man's nephew! I got a Coke for you, where you want it?"

Dean's shoulders-deep in the Celica's engine block. "Just put it by my bag, will you?" he shouts back. "Thanks!"

It's nearly another half hour later before he takes a break, and heads over to where he left his bag on the work bench to get the can of Coke. It's next to his bag, which has tipped over onto its side, and Pyg is starting to slide out of the main pocket. Dean hurriedly shoves him back inside, looking around.  Then, as he picks up the sweating can of Coke, he sees the black oil coating his fingers and, cringing, tugs the zipper of his backpack open enough to look at Pyg.

Sure enough, there's a big smear of oil across the front of the bag.

Dean curses and licks his thumb, grimacing at the acrid taste of the oil, and tries to rub some of it off the bag. He only succeeds in smearing it more.

"Aw, fuck."

 

Regardless, when he gets home that night, having finished the Celica, and done an oil change on top of that, thank you very fucking much, he's in a good mood, so good that he leans in to where Cas is sitting at the table grading essays to brush a kiss behind his ear without even thinking about it.

Cas leans his head back to look up at him. He looks faintly surprised, but no less pleased for it. "Hello, Dean."

"Hey, babe," Dean says, jubilant, and tosses his bag onto a chair. He goes to the kitchen to wash his hands in the sink.

Cas observes him through the doorway. "You're happy."

"It feels good to get my hands in an engine again," Dean says. "I feel like I'm _doing_ something." He grabs a dish towel to dry off.

"You were always doing something," Cas says.

"I know," Dean replies. "But I've been working since I was sixteen, Cas. It didn't sit right with me, not contributing."

Cas's expression is very fond. It's the expression he gets sometimes just before he leans in and hooks his fingers gently into Dean's belt loops to pull him closer. But he's not making any move to do that, so Dean moves toward him, instead, and leans against the table edge next to him, their thighs pressed against one another's, and just smiles down at him, broad and pleased. Cas leans against him, his shoulder to Dean's ribs, and they stay like that until the timer on the stove goes off and the girls come clambering downstairs.

Cas gets up to get the food off the stove. Dean waves him off, going to get them himself so Cas can clear his papers from the table.

Emma appears in the dining room. "Where's Pyg?"

"In my bag," Dean calls, spooning rice onto plates, then freezes, remembering the oil smear. "Hey, uh--"

Emma gives a shout.

 

"Hmmm," Claire says. Callipygian sits on the dining room table, next to the bowl of cheese-covered broccoli. The big black smear across his front looks even darker in the yellow light from the dining room light as night falls outside the windows. She tilts her head. "It gives him a certain debonair charm. Like a mustache. Or a unibrow."

"You teacher can't deduct points for this, Emma," Cas comforts. "When children go on adventures, they're bound to get dirty."

"Yeah, and kids grow up to become ugly all the time," Claire says. "Look at you."

"Claire," Cas says sternly.

"I'm trying to distract her!" Claire protests.

Cas gives her a look that says he doesn't buy it. Emma gives her the finger.

Claire tosses her head, ignoring them both. "What about if we give him, like, a ninja mask? That'll cover it up. His name can be Callipygian Leonardo."

"Uh, no," says Dean. "Try Callipygian Donatello."

"Those are both dumb names," Emma says.

"You're a dumb name," Claire says.

Cas looks pained. Dean says, "All right, knock it off, you're gonna scare Cas away from the table."

"Make us," Claire says, and Emma hides a grin in her hand. Cas sighs, and lifts his plate, and also Pyg, and heads with him to his office, shutting the door behind them.

Claire, Emma, and Dean stare after him. Then they look at each other and burst out laughing.

 

After dinner and chores, Claire and Emma retreat upstairs to do homework. Dean spreads his things out on the coffee table and tries not to feel abandoned. The girls both have desks in their rooms, and Cas has one in his office, so it makes sense for them all to be in those places, doing their work, but it still leaves Dean sitting in the living room alone.

He leafs half-heartedly through _Wide Sargasso Sea_ , bouncing the sharp spine against his knee cap. Then he pretends to start his history reading.

Then he sighs, and lays his cheek on top of the book, and sighs again.

There's movement from the doorway. He looks up, cheek dragging against the page, and sees Emma there in her sweat pants, holding her math book and rubbing her foot against her ankle.

"Hey," he says, cheek smushed against the book.

"Hey," she says back. "Did you do the math homework yet?"

"Nope," he says, and lifts his head from the book. He scoots over, clearing a space for her on the table, and she comes over and sits down on the other side of it, setting down her book and paper.

They're on number five before he gives into the temptation to ask, "So where'd you go today?"

"Where'd _you_ go?"

He gives her _fine, I'll humor you_ look. "Garage. I called Vince and told him we were hiring my nephew Moriarty part-time while he's here."

"And Vince bought it?"

"Yeah," Dean says, pitching his voice in the gruff, adult voice he used on the phone with Vince.

"Did he ask why Batman was calling?"

"Brat." Dean kicks her leg under the table. "So where'd you go?"

Her expression becomes uncharacteristically uncertain. "I don't wanna say yet."

Dean's brows furrow.

Emma mumbles, "In case it doesn't work out."

Dean's brows don't unknit, but he nods. "Okay." A pause. "Tell me if I can help, okay?"

Emma looks at him. Then she says, "Okay," and ducks forward to lean over her book, her hair falling forward to hide her face.

 

(When Dean comes downstairs the next morning, Pyg has a hand-drawn cardboard turtle shell attached to him by a very stretchy blue head band around his middle, and a blue shoe lace tied around his head region. Googly eyes have been glued underneath it.

He bursts into laughter.)

 

One of the hacky sack kids comes up to them during lunch the next day. Dean's got Pyg in his lap, inside his zipped-up jacket, 'cause it's fucking _cold_ out here, and he can see why Emma might be able to tolerate it, maybe, with the whole Amazon thing, but those kids are human, and lightweights on top of that, probably barely a hundred and twenty pounds each.

Emma pretends not to notice the dude as he comes up in front of them, scuffing his boot in the slush on the sidewalk, so Dean squints up at him.

"Hey," the kid says.

"Hey," Dean says.

The kid squirms some more. He's got a bunch of acne on his chin, and Dean feels a surge of camaraderie: He discovered a zit on his forehead this morning and had sneaked into Claire and Emma's bathroom to steal some concealer for it. He thinks they noticed, if the quelling look Cas gave Claire at breakfast was any indication, which is humiliating in its own way. He really hates being a teenager.

"Um," he says. "If you guys--do you wanna--join? When you're done? Eating?"

"No--" Emma begins, but Dean says, "Sure."

The kid grins. "Cool." He gives a little wave, then jogs back to his friends.

Dean looks over at Emma.  She's giving him a displeased look.

"What?" he says. "You gonna keep me from making friends?"

Emma sniffs and steals his tater tots.

 

Claire comes into Emma's room that night while she's doing homework at her desk. She makes herself at home on top of Emma's bed, grabbing Pyg and setting him on her stomach so she can toy with the trailing ends of his ninja headband.

"So," she says. "Rumor has it you're working at the retirement home."

Emma's pen falters on her notebook. She digs it into the paper, jaw tightening. Of course Claire found out. Because Claire has friends everywhere, and those friends tell her everything, and Emma can't have one thing, not _one thing_ , to herself.

"I have to wonder," Claire continues, "why, of all the people you could volunteer with, it would be old people." She rocks Pyg back and forth. "Part of me thinks it's morbid."

"Part of me thinks you should get out of my room."

"Only part of you, though."

Emma glares at her.

"Anyway, that's not my question," Claire says. "My question is, if you're not going to college, what are you planning to do when we graduate? I know you're not planning to stick around here with Cas and Dean."

"Says who?"

"Says the fact that you've been squirreling away money in your closet."

Panic and anger filter red across Emma's vision. "You've been snooping through my stuff?"

Claire raises an eyebrow. Which makes Emma angrier; if anyone's being unreasonable, it's Claire,  thinking it's okay to go through Emma's stuff. "Get out."

Claire sits up, setting Pyg aside. She pulls something out of her hoodie's front pocket and slides it across Emma's bed toward her. It's a brochure, glossy and colorful. "I've been looking at the pre-law program at USD. If you let me help you with your application, I think you could get in, too."

Emma pushes to her feet. Her eyes are bright and flashing with fury. "Get _out_!"

"Emma--"

"I don't need your charity!" Emma shouts at her. "I'm not going to college, and if I was, I wouldn't go with _you_!"

Claire's face goes icy. Before she can say anything, footsteps are thundering up the stairs. She purses her lips, and Cas raps loudly on the door, pushing it open.

He looks back and forth between them. "What's going on here?"

Neither of them speak. They just stare at each other: Emma's eyes abruptly pleading despite the fury burning in them, and Claire looking just as furious but keeping her mouth shut.

Cas sighs. "Claire," he says. "I'd like you to come help me with dinner."

"I'm busy," Claire says. She walks past both of them, out into the hallway, and slams her door.

Cas looks at Emma. "Do you wish to talk?"

" _No_ ," Emma says.

 

Regardless, he goes back to Emma's room that night, after Dean has come home and they have had a dinner which is stormy and silent, marked by Emma and Claire ignoring each other and Dean shooting them puzzled looks and Cas _what the hell's going on now_ looks.

He knocks on her door. "May I come in?"

Her door is already partially open, a crack left between it and the jamb, just enough to see her socked feet on her bedspread. "Do I have any choice?" her voice says sarcastically.

Cas doesn't move. "You always have a choice."

Emma sighs. "Come in."

Cas steps inside, closing the door gently behind him. She scoots over on her bed to make room for him, and he feels such gratefulness at the gesture, which is so little but means so very much for her to give. He can still remember the guarded, skittish child he first met, who cringed from him and shied from him and spoke to no one, not even Dean. He knows what she has been and he knows what she has become, and he does not know how to vocalize how proud he is of her for it, how greatly he admires her for it when he still feels so uncertain in the things he does and says.

He sits gently on the side of her bed. She doesn't put down her pen, which is poised above a notebook full of math problems, but she doesn't write anything with it, just digs the nib into the paper, scratching small dark shapes.

Cas takes a breath. "I am not sure how much Claire has told you."

Emma's pen pauses.

"It is not…my story to tell," Cas says. "But...do you know how she and I--"

"Her dad was your vessel," Emma says. She looks deeply uncomfortable, like she prefers not to think about this aspect of Castiel.

"Yes," Cas says. "Do you know what is involved in becoming an angel's vessel?"

"…pain?"

Cas's smile is brief and bleak. "Yes," he says. "It also requires consent. I had to ask her father to be my vessel. And he had to say yes."

"He _let_ you do it?"

"Yes," Cas says. "And I don't believe that Claire has ever forgiven him for that."

Emma is quiet for a long time.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" she says finally. "Why did you tell me?"

Cas says, "So that you might understand why it is Claire wants so very badly for people to stay."

He stands up. He pats her shoulder, gently, beneath her hair, and leaves.

 

That night, he curls up close to Dean in the bed, knees drawn close to his chest. Dean doesn't say anything, but he wraps his gangly adolescent limbs around Cas, an octopus, a shield, and holds him close beneath his chin.

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

"Five seconds!" Coach Sergei slaps the mat. "Three points, Winchester--good job."

Dean lets go of Marcus. The other kid collapses onto the wrestling mat, his shoulder blades thumping into the foam, before he rolls back onto his feet.

"Dude," he says. "You're killing me with the near falls here."

Dean grins, snapping the strap of his singlet. "What can I say? It's my specialty."                                                

"Bein' an ass is your specialty," Marcus retorts.

" _Beatin'_ your ass is my specialty," Dean retorts back, and when Marcus groans, he shoots him a _you walked right into that one_  grin. Marcus flips him the bird, grinning back, and they position themselves on their respective sides of the mat again, waiting for Coach to blow the whistle for them to go.

This time, Marcus gets him with a reversal when Dean tries to pin him again. Coach counts off the seconds and then slaps the mat--that finishes their practice match for the day, and he waves them off to the locker room with reminders to finish their weight training before the gym closes early on Friday.

The locker room is already a ruckus of steam and towel-snapping when they get inside; Marcus and Dean were the second-to-last partners to get checked off, and the football team just ended practice, too. Dean grabs his stuff and heads for the showers, ducking a set of football players trying to give each other wedgies.

"--some good head," one of his teammates is saying when Dean finds a group of the wrestlers in the older shower section, the one that still has green tile. "Yo, Winchester! Am I right?"

Dean freezes despite himself. It's stupid, it's not as if they could know, it's not as if he's done it this time--

"Man, I haven't even seen him _look_ at a girl," says Burke. "Yo, Dubya, you gay?"

More laughter explodes amid the sounds of the showers. Ingles shouts, "Why, Burke, you lookin'?"

"Man, fuck off," Burke says, chucking his soap at the other guy. Ingles goes, "He dropped the soap!" and there's more laughter. Dean quickly soaps up and rinses, getting the hell out of the showers before anyone can try to talk to him again.

Marcus is still out by the lockers, digging through his bag. He looks up when Dean comes in. "Man, you're already done? You know you're supposed to actually use the soap, right?"

Dean's still stiff, his muscles tense. "Ha ha."

Marcus watches him grab his jeans. "Where're you always runnin' to after practice, anyway? You got a curfew or something?"

"I work." Dean pulls his shirt over his head, then his sweatshirt, eyes resolutely on his locker.

"Oh." Marcus hesitates a minute. "You need a ride?"

Dean looks at him. His smile, when it comes, is a little more real this time. "Nah, man, I'm good. Thanks, though."

Marcus shrugs. "Anytime, man. See you tomorrow."

 

Emma kicks ass at hacky sack. Dean can keep the sack going around the circle, but he sucks when it comes to doing the tricks like Joseph, Donny, and Amrit do with their knees and the insides of their feet. But Emma only needs Joseph to demonstrate an Around the World kick for her once the next day at lunch before she's doing it like a pro, and the next thing they know she's doing Soul Stalls and Flying Clippers and all sorts of other moves Dean is going to have to learn the words for.

He can see Joseph's crush growing by the minute.

"Hey," the kid pants at the end of lunch one day, when the warning bell has rung and everyone's starting to filter back toward the classrooms. "We're having kind of a get-together at my house this weekend. You guys wanna come?"

"No thanks," Emma says, but Dean steps on her foot and says, "Yeah, man, that'd be great."

Joseph beams. He and Amrit head off toward their AP Psych class, and Donny heads toward History. Dean starts toward their math class, and Emma kicks him in the back of the leg as he walks, making him stumble.

"Ow!" he says.

"Dean," she hisses.

"What?" He rubs his leg with his foot.

"I don't want to go to a party."

"Lighten up, it'll be good for you."

"No it won't."

"Sure it will." He pushes through the math hallway door. "Besides, going to parties is part of going to high school. You're not getting out of it."

"You didn't go to parties when you were in high school," Emma says accusingly.

"That's different," Dean says, and walks into the classroom before she can say anything else.

 

"Beatrice wants to know if you'll ask her to the winter formal," Claire says on the bus that afternoon.

Dean makes a sour-milk _what the hell_ face. "Beatrice asked _you_ to ask _me_ if I'll take her to a dance." There's a question mark somewhere in the sentence.

"Pretty much."

Dean's face _what the hell_ face intensifies. "And she couldn't ask me herself because…?"

"Because that's not how things work in high school."

Emma snorts. Claire ignores her, because that seems to be what they're doing these days, ignoring each other. Which is why Dean's sitting in a seat with Emma today, and with Claire two days ago, and he's starting to feel like the Hermione to their Ron and Harry, though he'd never make that analogy to anyone but Charlie.

"Well, tell her," Dean says, "I'm not going to the 'winter formal.' " He crooks his fingers into quotation marks.

"Why not?"

Dean snorts. "Why _not_ ," he mutters to himself.

 

"Why not?" Cas says when they get home and Claire has explained the situation to him, while Dean shoots her dagger eyes from the background. "You're the one encouraging Emma to attend a party thrown by her peers. Perhaps you should attend an adolescent social function as well."

"Uh, I'm going to that party with her," Dean says. "Therefore, my social obligations--which don't actually exist, by the way--are taken care of. Check."

"Are you sure you actually want to encourage this?" Emma mutters to Cas. "That girl really likes Dean."

Cas frowns. He looks at Claire, tilting his head. "Is it acceptable for you to encourage your friend in her admiration when Dean's affections are already otherwise engaged?"

Claire tilts her head back. " _Are_ they already otherwise engaged?"

"They are," Cas says calmly, and takes a sip of his coffee. Dean clears his throat and does not have to adjust his jeans, _does not_.

Okay, he really does.

Claire gives him an unimpressed look.

"How about this," he says, ignoring her. "If by some magical miracle I get changed back to my normal age before your formal thing, me and Cas'll both go. As chaperones, or whatever."

"Ugh," she says. " _Not_ what I wanted."

"Why do you want me to come anyway?" Dean demands. "I don't do dancing, or fancy clothes, or drinks that aren't alcohol. You can't honestly think I'd be a good date."

"I don't care what kind of _date_ you are." Claire rolls her eyes. "If you go, Cas'll make Emma go too."

"Hell no he won't," Emma mutters. She grabs Pyg from Dean's backpack and stomps upstairs.

"Coward!" Claire shouts after her. Cas sighs, and Dean kicks Claire in the shin.

 

Joseph's party is on Friday night. When Cas pulls up in front of his house around seven to drop off Dean and Emma, nearly half a dozen cars are already parked up and down the residential street.

Cas eyes the handful of college-aged-looking kids heading up the walk. "Are you sure--" he begins, but Dean thumps the back of his seat.

"We'll be great," he says. "We'll call you when we're ready to get picked up."

"You mean you'll be here waiting for me at eleven o'clock," Cas says with a _nice try_ eyebrow.

"Yeah, yeah, that," Dean says, climbing out of the Honda. "C'mon, Em."

She shoots Cas one more pleading look.

"Go on," he says gently. "You can always call me if you want to come home early."

Emma makes one more miserable face and then slides out of the car after Dean. Dean bumps her shoulder with his own and tries to seem more confident than he feels as they head up the front walk. He still remembers how much of a sore thumb he felt like when he and Sam went to that college party in Iowa, how he'd been sure that at any minute someone would look at him and notice he wasn't college material and kick him out. The circumstances are kind of different here, sure, but when it comes down to it, Dean still doesn't exactly fit in.

Joseph opens the door almost before they knock.

"Oh my God," he says. "Come in. I'm so sorry about all these people. My brother's having a party, and--"

Someone whoops, and music begins to thump in the living room. Dean peers over Joseph's shoulder to see some girls heading down the hallway with red Solo cups.

"Your brother's in college, I'm guessing?"

"Yeah," Joseph says with a wince. "C'mon--we're set up in the back, it's quieter there."

He leads them through the hallway and kitchen back out to a glass-walled sun room, where there's a big glass table and a bunch of wicker furniture. It's got French doors that separate it from the rest of the house, muffling all the noise from the house. Amrit and Donny are already sitting there, cans of orange Fanta beside their hands as they set up a kind of complicated-looking board game.

"Dude," Dean says, looking around. There's a big projector screen affixed to the wall, and projector hanging down from the ceiling a safe distance from the fan. "This is awesome."

"Yeah," Joseph says. "When the heater works out here, at least."

"It's cool, we wore gloves," Dean says, and wiggles his fingers Edwards Scissorhands style.

Emma makes a face like she wants to die.

"What?" Dean says gleefully. "You embarrassed of your old ma--cousin?"

"Always," Emma says.

"Whatever, man, we're all about the awkward here," Amrit says. He holds up a figurine. "Who wants to be the mad scientist?"

"Dude looks like a squid." Dean slides into one of the wicker chairs, wiggling around on the formidable cushion until he doesn't feel like he's sitting on a phone book. "What're my other choices?"

"You could be the little girl," Donny suggests, holding up another. "Or the chick in the jumpsuit."

"I call mad scientist." Emma sits down across from Donny.

"You guys want something to drink?" Joseph says. "There's soda--we've got orange and root beer and coke--and water, I guess, or coffee if you want it--"

Dean nearly says he'll take a beer before remembering himself. He waits for Emma to say, "Coke's good, thanks." Then, "The alcohol off limits?" he asks, watching Joseph keenly.

"Uh," Joseph hesitates, his eyes flicking toward his friends. Dean's eyes become sharper. "I mean--if you want, but--" It all comes out in a rush, "I'd kind of be more comfortable if you didn't."

Dean grins. "'s cool, man. I'll come help you get them." As they head inside, he slugs him in the shoulder. "I peer pressured you pretty hard right there, I like that you didn't cave."

Joseph shoots him a weirded-out look. "Okay," he says. "I mean--it's just I don't want any of us getting in trouble with the cops when they inevitably show up to bust my brother's party, I guess."

Dean nods. "Got it."

"So, your cousin," he says as he's pouring Coke into a glass. "Is she…?"

Dean raises an eyebrow.

"Never mind," Joseph mumbles.

"She's like a sister to me," Dean says. "So if anyone were to, you know… I'd fuck up their shit pretty fierce."

Joseph goes back to looking nervous. "Okay." He hesitates. "She's just really cool, is all."

"I know," Dean says happily, and takes a long slurp of his root beer before letting out a satisfyingly deafening burp. He should have just thought of this from the start as an opportunity to torture the kid who likes Emma; it takes so much of the pressure off.

 

The game Donny and Amrit were setting up is Betrayal at House on the Hill, which is so much like a typical month in Dean's pre-domestic life it's not even funny. Except for how it kind of is.

Their game pieces basically wander around a haunted house until one of them turns into a zombie (Dean, in the first game), a tentacle monster (Amrit, the second game), or a kid in charge of a Demon Lord (Dean again, the third game) and try to fuck the others up. It's way more fun to play than it is to deal with in real life, and Dean gets maybe a little overly enthusiastic about the whole thing.

"Dude!" he shouts when Amrit traps _another_ of his zombies in a room. "No zombie's gonna stay in a room just because it can't see you! They can smell your fucking brains, man!"

"Rule books says you don't make four, you don't make the door," Amrit says. "Sorry, broseph."

"Fuck your rule book," Dean retorts, and rolls three Might to see if he can knock Amrit out of the game for a turn. He gets two, _again_ , and Amrit cackles. "This game sucks."

"You suck." Amrit rolls a seven. "Boo-ya!"

Emma ignores them both, turning over her next Room tile and grabbing an Omen card. Joseph whoops when he sees she's gotten Blood Dagger.

"Is that bad?" Dean says. "Shit. Where's my Madman?"

"Hey, it's nine, turn on _Ghost Adventures_ , they're in Baton Rouge this episode." Donny leans backward in his chair in an attempt to reach the remote control for the projector.

"Donny, play the game."

"I am playing!"

"No you're not, you just missed like your last three turns."

"You guys should've reminded me!"

"Aw, c'mon," Dean says when he sees the show Donny's turned on. "Not this shit, those guys are such fakes."

"Shut up," Donny says, turning up the volume. "Zak's talking."

"Zak's always talking," Emma says. She's on her third can of orange Fanta. "Zak never _stops_ talking."

Donny shoots her a half-betrayed, half-resentful look. He turns the volume the rest of the way up.

Joseph's brother's party guests start spilling into the sun room during their third game. At first, it's easy enough to ignore them; they just stand around in the corner of the room, looking out the window at the snow falling, and talk, but after a while more and more of them start to come out, and some of them start kissing, and the door stays open to the rest of the house and the pounding music, and people get between Donny and the projector screen.

"Dude, come on," he says for the fiftieth time, shifting in his seat to try to see past someone. "Will you move, please?"

"You move, fag," says a guy, and someone bumps into the table hard enough to knock half their pieces over.

"Shut up, jackass," Emma says.

The guy doesn't hear her, or if he does, he pretends not to. Joseph glares at the table, and Donny glares at his knees, and Emma glares at the guy, and Amrit fiddles his figurine back and forth.

"Let's go upstairs," Joseph says finally. He scoops the game pieces into their box and Amrit scoops up the tiles and they all squeeze out of the sun room, up the stairs.

Dean glances behind him, jaw clenched. He can still see the guy, laughing as he leans toward a girl and slides his hand into her back pocket, and he makes up his mind. Pivots on his heel to push back toward him.

"Hey, Winchester, what's up?"

Dean blinks, attention startled away from the sun room. He looks over to see Burke and Ingles leaning against the kitchen counter.

"Hey," he says. "What're you guys doing here?"

"We're staying the weekend with the frat," Burke says, jerking his head at some guys in red shirts emblazoned with Greek letters. "They're givin' us a trial run and all that. What about you, man?"

Dean's quiet for a minute, remembering the paralysis of fear he felt in the locker room. It takes Burke saying, "Winchester" for him to snap out of it.

"'m here with my cousin," he says. "She's having game night with her friends or whatever."

"Lucky you found us, then," Ingles says.

"Uh." Dean takes a breath. Hitches a thumb over his shoulder. "Actually, I'm gonna head upstairs." He steps around them. "See you guys at practice."

He takes the stairs two at a time, not looking back. At the top of the stairway, there's a hallway of four doors, one of which has a big Halloween demon mask nailed to it. He pushes through it. "You guys finish setting up yet?"

They haven't. Emma's sitting in the desk chair in front a junk-covered desk, and the guys are all just flopped on the floor, game box untouched between them. Donny's throwing bean bags at the miniature basketball hoops hanging from Joseph's closet door.

"No point," he says dully. "The cards are all mixed up again."

Dean closes the door behind him, settling on the carpet. "You're just saying that 'cause I was winning."

Amrit snorts. "You were not."

"I so was." Dean reaches for the game board. "Tell 'em, Emma."

"You weren't even close to winning." She slides off the chair to sit across from him, eyeing him curiously. When he shrugs at her, she says, "I stunned your Demon Lord, and Joseph was controlling your third demon."

"Would you look at that awesome memory!" Dean says. "Wish you could use it for something useful, like when your library books are due."

"The fines aren't that much, stop complaining."

"In my day, fifty cents bought a soda," he declares.

"Yeah yeah, Captain America," she retorts. "C'mon, you guys, get over here so I can beat his ass."

"Iron Man," Dean says, stormy-faced.

"No, I can see you as Cap," Joseph says, promptly losing all the respect Dean had acquired for him earlier in the night.

He points a finger at him. "You. Shut your ignorant mouth."

"You do talk like some kinda middle-aged person a lot," Donny says, studying him. "I figured it was just 'cause you're related to Claire."

"You know Claire?" Dean and Emma say in surprised unison.

"Yeah," Donny says. "She's the GSA treasurer, didn't you know?"

"Huh," says Dean. Then he leans forward and rolls his dice. "Dude! How it is possible to roll _all_ blanks?"

Amrit scoops up the dice. "You're just an over-achiever, I guess."

 

When Cas picks them up two hours later, he says, "Well? Did you have fun?"

Emma shrugs. "It was okay."

"Whatever," Dean says. "It was awesome. Emma had so much fun it nearly killed her."

"It did kill me," Emma says. "I'm a ghost right now. Where's some iron?"

Dean kicks her. She kicks him back.

"By the way, Cas, you have competition," she says. "I think Donny likes Dean."

"Whatever," Dean says. "No kid who thinks Zak Bagans is hot has the good judgment to fall for me. God, it's like having a crush on Harry Spangler."

Emma says, "No, it's not, Zak actually has muscles," and she and Dean start arguing over who is the most pathetic TV ghost hunter, an argument Cas is quite happy to abstain from until they pull into the driveway.

Emma yawns and peers up at Claire's dark bedroom. Although she doesn't say anything, it's clear she's wondering where Claire is, and Cas takes pity on her. "Claire has gone to sleep over at Beatrice's. Apparently they are still working on a Spanish Club project."

Dean makes a skeptical-sounding noise. Emma doesn't look at either of them as she peels off her coat, heading upstairs.

"Good night!" Dean calls after her. "You're welcome for the best night of your life!"

She flips him the bird over her shoulder. Cas sighs as Dean grins.

His grin fades slightly as he turns to look at Cas, who is also shrugging off his coat and placing it over one of the hooks next to the door. Cas holds out a hand, and Dean shifts his shoulders to loosen his own, allowing Cas to pull it from his arms and hang it next to his own. He lets Cas take his hand as they head up the stairs themselves, into their bedroom. They strip down to their underwear, and while Cas gets under the covers, Dean goes to the bathroom to grab his sweatpants from the top of the hamper. When he comes back to the bed, he hesitates a minute before sliding under the covers.

Cas shifts sleepily. He cracks one eyelid open, looking at Dean like he can sense the things moving around in his head.

Dean scrunches his toes into the sheets for a minute. Then he squirms forward and pushes his ankle between Cas's. Cas adjusts his feet to make room for Dean's and then scoots his head closer to Dean's on the pillows. His breath smells of minty toothpaste and a hint of the lime-twist chips he likes to eat when he's grading papers. He falls asleep, breathing softly.

Dean lies awake beside him, thinking.

 

The next day, when Claire's friend Beatrice stops next to his locker before first period and reaches up to ruffle his hair playfully the way she's been doing every morning, he catches her arm.

"Look," he says. "I don't want to lead you on. I'm sort of--I've got a boyfriend."

Beatrice blinks up at him. He holds up the hand with his ring, hesitantly, and waves it like proof.

She stares for another second. Then she says, "Okay."

 

By lunchtime, everyone knows.

 

Cas drops his pen the second Dean skulks through the front door. It clatters onto the floor, rolling under the table as Cas shoots to his feet. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Dean says. "Got in a disagreement, is all."

 Cas makes a displeased sound and goes to the freezer and then the sink. When he comes back, he has a bag of frozen beans wrapped in a washcloth. He presses it gently to the side of Dean's face, where his lip is swollen and bloody, his eye starting to swell shut.

Claire is at the table. "Who did that to you?"

Dean takes the frozen bag into his own hand so he can pull away from Cas and go to the fridge. He pulls out a beer.

"Dean," Claire says.

"Do your homework, Claire." He pops open the beer and takes a long gulp, then presses the cold can against his split knuckles. It feels good.

'When he turns from the fridge, though, Claire's standing in front of him. "Dean," she says again.

"Claire, fuck off. " He's immediately angry with himself for saying it, but she's so fucking much like Sammy sometimes, the way she gets right under his skin and needles him until he snaps. "I don't need you playing guard dog."

He stomps upstairs. He encounters Emma, halfway up them, and only meets her big, shocked eyes for a second before he presses the frozen beans more fully over his eye and takes the rest of the stairs two at a time.

 

Cas finds him in the garage about an hour later. He sits down on the concrete floor next to Dean's feet where they stick out from under the car.

Dean keeps fiddling with the undercarriage of Emma and Claire's car. Then, when he can't delay any longer, he slides out on the creeper.

Cas is in a pair of jeans and a Cougars sweatshirt. It's purple and makes him look ridiculous. It's also about the same color as Dean's black eye, as Cas reaches out and runs his thumb gently down it.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"For what," Dean says roughly.

Cas's eyes say _you know what for_. "Claire told me that you are…out."

Dean shrugs and sits up from the creeper. It's easier now than it usually is, his back not protesting as painfully at the movement. He slings his arms over his knees. "Yeah."

"I'm sorry." Cas's voice is quieter this time.

"It wasn't your fault."

"Perhaps," Cas says. "But if we weren't…" He lets out a breath. "I seem to make everything harder for you."

"There's nothing better about 'if we weren't,'" Dean says. "Cas. Believe me. This didn't have anything to do with you. This was something I shoulda done a long time ago."

He senses Cas is about to go into one of his _you shouldn't feel compelled to do anything you don't want to_ speeches. He raises a hand to offset it, then slides that same hand into his hair, to clasp the back of his neck as he bends his head forward.

"When I was in high school the first time," he says, "I mean, when I was actually sixteen. I was on the wrestling team. And man, I was good at it. I loved winning and people telling me how good I was at it, 'cause I--I didn't get that a lot. But it was also--I'd never been that close to other people before. On the mat. Other…guys.

"And I was so fucking scared," he says, "all the time. Of how I felt, that someone was gonna--every fucking meet, I just--there was this guy, on my team, and I was so scared, every time, that I was gonna do something. I was gonna do something, and everyone would know."

He tightens his fingers around the back of his neck. "I didn't have anyone back then. I didn't--I knew my dad'd never take me back if he found out. I thought Sonny might kick me out if he did. Sammy might think--horrible things. Everything I had, I coulda lost.

"But," Dean says, and finally raises his head, "what do I have to lose here?"

Cas looks back at him.

"Nothing," Dean says. "There's literally nothing for me to lose. A tooth from some jackass punching me, maybe. They can't take anything else away from me. They can't take…you, or Em, or Claire, or Sam. They can't take away my house, or my--there's nothing. I was just being a scared little bitch, and there's no excuse for that."

He lets out a breath and lowers his hand from his neck. "So." He swipes it down his face instead. "Don't apologize. It's not your fault."

Cas's hand slides up Dean's neck to the same place his own fingers just were. He cups the nape of Dean's neck and leans their heads together until their foreheads are touching. Dean leans into it, feeling like a kid at a sleepover, leaning together to tell each other secrets.

But Cas doesn't say anything. Not for a long time. When he does, he says, "I wish I had been with you. I wish I could have been someone you would not be afraid of losing."

Dean breathes a laugh against his cheek. "I'm afraid of losing everyone, Cas. It's kind of my defining character trait."

"No," Cas says back, his voice so low it thrums in Dean's chest. He pulls back, just far enough for their eyes to meet. "It's not."

"What is, then?"

"Pie," Cas tells him. "Your insistence on controlling the music when driving." He smiles suddenly, shy and sly at the same time. "Your perky nipples."

Dean looks at him. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, and he shakes his head, looking down at his hands. Cas smiles softly and brings his forehead back to Dean's. Dean runs his nose back and forth along the stubble of Cas's cheek, then his lips, against the prickly roughness.

Cas turns his head to meet them with his own. It's a brush of skin, little more, before Cas's mouth is just resting against the corner of Dean's, but it feels like scorching, somehow, like a very hot spice pressed against Dean's lips. He leans into Cas's again, as though to extinguish the burn, and they kiss softly, languidly, against the side of the car until Claire comes out to tell them dinner's ready.

 

Emma's not at lunch the next day. Dean waits several minutes in the corner of the science hallway where they've started eating lunch since it started getting seriously cold.

"Any of you guys seen her?"

Amrit and Joseph shake their heads.

"She might be in the principal's office," Donny says quietly. "She got into…kind of a fight this morning."

"Kind of a fight?"

"Like. With one of the guys who." He gestures at his own eye to indicate Dean's black one. "You know."

Dean's already pushing to his feet. "See you guys later."

He finds Emma on his way to the office. She's standing outside on one of the second-floor breezeways, unbothered by the cold, hair blowing into her face as she watches something below her.

"Hey. Creepy stalker chick." He bumps her shoulder, following her gaze down to the football players and wrestling team members cutting across the side yard to the weight room. "What're you going?"

She doesn't look over at him. Their shoulders stay touching.

"Emma," he says, more seriously. "What're you doing, kid."

"They hurt you."

"Sure they did." His eye is a startling purple today, and there's a scab on his lip he keeps running his tongue over. "But I hurt them back."

He remembers belatedly that's probably not the sort of moral he should be preaching to his kid. "Uh."

She doesn't seem to be paying attention to him, though. Her fists are curled tight under her crossed elbows. She hasn't got any gloves on.

"Hey," he says. "Em. Where's Pyg?"

She uncurls a little at that. Opens her zipped-up coat, and he can see that the flour bag is tucked inside.

"Oh," he says. "Good. It's just, Amrit was saying he heard somebody's going around drawing dicks on people's flour babies, so I wanted to make sure he was safe."

Emma seems to come a little out of whatever trance she was in. She curves her left arm a little more securely around Pyg. "I've got him."

"I know." Dean pushes his shoulder a little more against hers, leans into her. "I know you do, kiddo."

 

Claire's outside the locker room after school when Dean arrives for practice, his backpack slung over one shoulder.

He stops short. "What're you doing here?"

She pushes away from the wall. "Some welcome."

"Yeah," Dean says warily. He can hear Burke's loud voice inside, and laughter, and his black eye throbs. "Don't you have band practice?"

"Called in sick," she says. "Wanted to make sure no one tries anything funny."

The world tilts for Dean, for a minute. He remembers _I'm gonna rip his lungs out!_ and glaring down kids for Sammy.

He coughs. "That so?"

"Yup," Claire says.

She sits in the bleachers in the weight room for the entire practice. It doesn't stop Burke from hissing things at him, or Ingles or Williams from refusing to be paired with him on the mat, but he glances up there and meets her blue eyes, unimpressed eyebrows and conspiratorial smirks, every once in a while, and it makes a difference.

 

"Thanks," he mumbles afterward.

"No problem," she says, "little bro."

He hauls her into a headlock and gives her a noogie for that.

 

The next day, she joins him, Emma, and the guys at lunch. She plops down next to Dean where he's sitting across from Amrit and Emma with their little plastic dishes of shepherd's pie and starts talking to Donny and Joseph as if she eats lunch with them every day. Dean blinks, and he and Emma exchange glances before Emma looks back down at her tray.

After a while, Emma slips away on the pretense of throwing her trash away. Dean slips after her when she doesn't come back and finds her outside, on the bleachers, throwing pebbles down at the white-covered ground.

Dean climbs up after her. He settles on the bench next to where she stands, feeling the cold from the metal seep through the seat of his jeans. He squints out across the football field, swollen eye throbbing in protest.

"You know, you can both be their friends," he says finally. "Just 'cause Donny and all of them are getting along with Claire doesn't mean they like her better."

Emma ignores him for a minute. Then, "Thanks, Mr. Rogers."

"Do you see me wearing a sweater?" he says in mock offense.

"Just give it a few weeks," she retorts. He gets her in a headlock and ties her jacket hood shut, puckered up like a lemon, and stuff the strings inside the tiny hole. She punches him in the hip and he howls with laughter as he slips and nearly takes them both over the edge of one of the icy benches.

"You guys left me behind!"

They look down. Claire is climbing up the bleachers.

Emma raises her middle finger. Claire gets a hold of her hood strings and tugs them tighter. Emma makes an angry muffled noise. Dean manhandles her under his arm again and sits down on the top bleacher bench. Claire sits on his other side.

Emma finally fumbles her jacket hood open, face flushed. "You _suck_ ," she informs him, and he grins with his black eye and swollen lip.

They sit for a while, looking out at the football field in the cold. Catching their breath, and then, when they've caught it, blowing it out into the air in billowing white clouds.

"Call me the Desolation of Smaug," Claire says after blowing a particularly large cloud.

"You're saying it wrong," Emma says. "It's _Smaug_."

"That's how I said it."

"Is not."

"Is so."

Dean sighs.

"Oh," says Claire. "That was an _I wish Cas was here_ sigh."

"Wasn't," Dean mumbles, ears reddening.

"It was," Claire says. "Maybe you two can come out here one of these days."

"And do what?" Emma says.

"What do people usually do under the bleachers, Emma?"

"Nobody said anything about under the bleachers," Dean says.

"You were thinking it," Claire says.

"You're such a pervert," Emma mutters. "If only everyone knew your true face, seriously."

"I call it exceeding expectations," Claire replies.

Dean tunes his kids out, leaning back on the bench, his legs kicked up onto the one below it. He watches the wisps of clouds moving through the cold blue sky and lets himself imagine what high school might have been like if Cas had been there for it. Tries to imagine sitting at lunch with Cas, or riding the bus with him. Playing board games at parties and looking up into the bleachers at practices and meets and seeing Cas up there watching him back.

"--would be a jock."

"Who've you been getting weed from? How do you look at Cas's elbow patches and think jock?"

"He'd be one of those jocks who finds the path to enlightenment after he falls for a total nerd."

Both Claire and Emma's heads swivel around to look at Dean.

"Seriously?" he says. "What road did you take to get to me being a nerd? I'm a greaser."

"True," Claire concedes. "You're Soda Pop."

" _Fuck_ no. I'm Darry."

Emma's groaning, cinching her hood closed again so only her nose pokes out. "Can we _please_ not talk about that woman's book? You know how I feel about her."

"Good things can be created by bad people," Claire intones.

Dean says, "Do you really think I'm Soda Pop?"

 

"You're totally Soda Pop," Sam says.

"Aw, fuck you," Dean says, digging deeper into the engine block he's working on. He has a policy at the garage about not using cell phones while at work, on account of that time Joey dropped his behind someone's transmission and couldn't get it out, but he's not great at obeying his own rules. Also, he's not Joey. "I'm Darry, man. Darry."

"You're kind of a combination of both?" Sam says. "Like if Darry and Soda had a baby. That would be you."

"Now you're just making it creepy."

"Says the guy who's playing Flour Baby with his daughter," Sam says dryly. "How is Callipygian, by the way?"

"Way better behaved than you ever were," Dean says. "A better dresser, too. Emma keeps finding new clothes for him, it's weird."

"Dressing a kid is half the fun of having one."

"Says the guy with no kids."

"Fuck off," Sam says good-naturedly. There's the sound of typing. "Hey, Amelia wants to know how Emma's doing."

Dean frowns, adjusting his wrench around a bolt. "Fine, I think. Why?"

"Well, she just seemed kinda…off, the last time we saw her."

"Oh. Yeah," he says. "The whole…well. Her and Claire were fighting. I think they've smoothed things over. Sort of."

"They're really close, huh." Sam's voice is soft and a little wistful.

"Yeah."

"Emma changed her mind about college?"

Dean stiffens. "Haven't asked."

"Okay," Sam says. It's his careful voice, his _I'm backing off, no need to get defensive_ voice. "I was just wondering." He's quiet for a moment. "It's gonna be hard on her when Claire goes wherever she ends up going."

"Uh-huh." Dean doesn't want to think about it. It's a big ugly knot in his gut. "Hey, Sammy, I gotta go."

"Okay." Sam sounds a little sad now. But then his voice goes teasing as he says, "You stay fizzy, okay, Soda?"

Dean snorts despite himself. "Fuck you, Ponyboy."

 

"Hey, Em," he says as they work on their math homework that night. Pyg sits on the coffee table between them, a new crocheted blue beanie perched on his head. "You ready to tell me what you been doin' in the afternoons yet?"

Emma's chewing on her thumbnail as she writes out equations. It takes her a minute even to realize he's talking to her; she blinks twenty seconds later and says, "What?"

"After school," he says. "Where've you been going?"

Her eyes flinch away. They skitter to the door, and Pyg, and the door again.

"You don't gotta tell me," Dean says quickly.

She chews on her thumbnail for another few seconds, staring at her math book. Then she mumbles something.

"What's that?"

"Nursing home," she says more clearly.

Dean blinks. Emma keeps doing her homework, writing numbers. She doesn't look at him, but he can sense the expectation hanging uncertainly between them.

"Wow," he says. "That's…cool."

Her pencil stops. She peers at him from beneath her bangs.

"Sammy did that for a while," he says. "Volunteered there, I mean. They thought he was a girl. 'Cause his hair was so long. One of the old ladies knit him a hair band for it." He's babbling. "That where Pyg's getting all his new duds from?"

"Yeah."

"Cool," he says again. Feels inadequate. "Do…do you like it?" Then he shakes his head at himself. "I guess that's a stupid question. Why else would you do it, right?"

Emma's staring hard at her paper. "Yeah. I guess I do."

"Good." Dean picks up his pencil again. Then rocks up onto his heels to reach across the table and ruffle her hair before dropping back onto his heels. "Good."

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

When Thanksgiving rolls around, Benny is the first member of the Novak-Winchester Superfriends to arrive in Sioux Falls. He always comes a little earlier than everyone else, and this time he comes in time for Dean's big wrestling tournament the Saturday before the holiday. His truck rumbles down their road around seven in the morning Saturday, and Dean's already waiting on the front porch in his uniform and coat, shifting impatiently from foot to foot as white breath puffs from his mouth. When Benny pulls into the driveway, he jumps all three porch steps at once and nearly sprints for the truck.

"Hey," he says breathlessly, bracing his forearm on Benny's open window.

"Hey back," Benny says, amused. "Look at you, Mr. Athlete."

Dean squirms, zipping his coat shut the rest of the way over his brightly colored uniform. "Will you take Emma?" he says. "Her and Cas kind of--had a fight. About going."

Benny's eyebrow lifts. Cas and Emma are usually the only two in the family who _don't_ fight.

"Yeah," Dean says. "I know."

"There somethin' in particular they're quarrelin' about?"

"She said she doesn't wanna come watch me roll around on a mat in a unitard. _I_ don't care--" his eyes flicker away a little; he shrugs, "but Cas said she has to come. Family support or whatever."

Benny runs his tongue along his lip, thinking. "All right," he says. "Y'all get goin', and we'll catch up."

Dean steps back from the truck so Benny can get out. "Thanks," he says gratefully.

Benny ruffles his hair. "You just focus on your fight."

"It's not a _fight_ ," Dean says, rolling his eyes, but steps back. He gets into Cas's car as Cas and Claire come out of the house, Cas raising a hand of greeting at Benny. He looks composed, mostly, but his trenchcoat is flapping open and loose instead of buttoned neatly shut; he looks like the smiting angel from Purgatory that Benny remembers striding toward werewolves and Leviathan.

They get into the car and pull away; it's another three minutes before Emma comes out of the house, scuffing her feet in the slush that lines the front walk.

"Hey," she says to Benny, who's leaning against his truck with his feet kicked out in front of him as snow falls onto his shoulders.

"Hey," he says back. "We goin' to this wrestling thing?"

She glares at the ground some more. "Guess so," she mutters viciously.

"Ain't no guess about it," Benny says. "You wanna go somewhere else, we can. There's a new Nicholas Sparks movie out, I hear."

"I'm _not_ going to a Nicholas Sparks movie."

"Aw, c'mon now. Indulge an old man."

"No," Emma says, but she's smiling a little as they get into the truck.

"Speakin' of the elderly." Benny glances over at her. "Cas told me you got a job."

She stiffens a little.

"Relax, _chère_ ," he says. "I ain't told Elizabeth you're cheatin' on her."

Emma laughs. It's a good sound, and Benny smiles, too, props his elbow out the edge of his window.

"Now you tell me what you been up to," he says. "I know you're real good at dealing with your dinosaur of a daddy, but I wouldn't'a pegged you as somebody to work with white-haired folks."

"I worked with you, didn't I?"

Benny makes a grab for the back of her neck to give her a shake. She twists away, cackling as they pull up to a red light. Benny rolls his window down the rest of the way and meets the eyes of the two women in the Suburban next to them.

"Y'all know Emma Winchester?" he says to them through the window. "She's a cruel-hearted girl. She's got a heart made 'a honest-to-God ice."

She's laughing harder now, and the women are looking at Benny like they'd really like the light to change to green. He sighs and rolls up his window. The light turns to green and they accelerate forward.

After a while, when she's stopped laughing, he glances over at her and says, "You ain't answered my question."

Emma rolls her lip under her teeth. Benny keeps looking at her, expectant, even when they pull into the high school parking lot.

"There was this old lady," she says finally. "When we first went to get Claire in the hospital, you know? I sat with her a while." She rolls her lip some more. "I was there when she died."

Benny listens.

"She was all alone." Emma wraps her arms around the bag in her lap. "But she was ready to go. She wasn't scared.

"Some of them are," she says. "The people where I work. But most of them aren't. They're…they're ready."

Benny's quiet for another moment, waiting for her to say anything more. "Sounds like you admire 'em for that."

"Yeah," Emma says.

They're both quiet for a while as the slow drifting snow begins to accumulate on the windshield wipers. Then Benny nods at the bag in her lap. "What's all this about?"

Emma unzips it. "This is Pyg."

Benny can't help it. He barks out a huge laugh that leaves Emma smiling tentatively again. It's a flour bag wearing a knitted blue jumper with tiny, useless sleeves and a matching beanie cap. Emma pulls out two little sea-anemone-looking things and pushes them inside the sleeves so they poke out a little.

"Those supposed to be pom-poms?"

"Yup," Emma says, concentrating on pushing them into the sleeves. "Mrs. Donofrio made 'em."

"Who made the blanket?" Benny nods at the tiny afghan in psychedelic colors folded in the bag; it looks like it has the words **FLOWER BABY** stitched into it.

"Mrs. Platzer."

"He's got a whole trousseau in there, don't he?" Benny cranes his head to look inside the bag.

"They like him," Emma says. "At the nursing home. They think it's hilarious that our school has us raising fake kids."

"It is," Benny says, still smiling to himself. "What's that brown stuff at his top?"

"Claire got chocolate on him." There's a hint of petulance in her voice. "She said it was an accident, but I don't think it was."

Benny hums noncommittally. Emma admits, "It makes him smell good, though," and holds the flour bag out to Benny to smell. He leans in obligingly and scents flour, and motor oil, and semi-sweet chocolate and dusty yarn.

"He sure does," he says. Then gets his hand on the scruff of Emma's neck and tugs her closer, sniffing her exaggeratedly. "So do you."

She laughs. She's still laughing when they get into the gym, her tucked under his big arm and Pyg tucked under hers, and climb up onto the bleacher row Cas and Claire have staked out. Cas turns the digital camcorder he brought to take Dean's match onto them, recording Emma's flushed, grinning face and Pyg's pom-poms.

Claire grabs Pyg and starts shaking his sleeves. She shouts, "Dean, Dean, he's our man, just check out that farmer's tan!" and Benny's laughter rings through the whole gymnasium.

So does Dean's "SHUT UP, CLAIRE!"

 

The rest of the family begins descending onto Sioux Falls on Monday. Charlie arrives first, then Garth and Bess. Charlie comes armed with cosplay outfits for Pyg that include a small Velcro light saber belt with detachable light saber--double-bladed and red.

"C'mon," she says when Claire raises a protest over the color. "Just _look_ at that oil goatee. He's clearly a Sith Lord in training."

"Well, hey now," Garth says. He is, currently, and perhaps inadvisably, sporting a goatee.

"You'd be Yoda, sweetheart, don't you worry," Bess reassures, squeezing his hand.

Claire makes a gagging face at Emma.

Amelia and Sam get there on Tuesday morning, while Benny's out grocery shopping with Bess and Cas for feast supplies. Amelia's also brought a gift for Pyg, a strap-on baby papoose that makes Claire shout with laughter when she sees it. She puts it on and grabs Pyg from Emma to put him in it, parading around with him like that the rest of the day. Emma sulks in the corner, crammed into the couch between Amelia and Charlie until Benny's truck rambles back into the driveway, at which time she jumps to her feet. But Dean streaks past them from the kitchen like a dog that's been waiting all day for its owner to return, banging through the front door and thundering down the porch steps. Emma looks dismayed and plops back down into her place on the touch.

Amelia watches all of this with amusement. "Benny really is the Winchester Whisperer, isn't he?"

Claire nods. "Yep."

Emma glares at them. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means whenever one of you is freaked out about something, you run to Benny."

"Maybe," Emma says, "I wouldn't have to run to Benny if I had a sister who was more supportive."

"I support you," Claire says, patting Pyg on the head. "I just laugh while doing it."

Amelia snorts Coke up her nose from laughing so hard, and Cas and Sam stop talking in the dining room to lean around the doorway and look at them in concern until Charlie stops thumping Amelia hard on the back.

The Trans don't arrive until Wednesday night, on account of Kevin having stayed at his college to finish a lab Tuesday night. They spent all Wednesday driving, and Mrs. Tran's mood shows it; she's cranky.

"You wouldn't _believe_ the traffic we hit getting here," she says loudly, shouldering over the front threshold with two suitcases nearly as tall as her. "Honestly. What does anyone actually _want_ to come to the middle of godforsaken South Dakota for?"

"Technically, it's the edge," Charlie says, and Mrs. Tran shoots her an Evil Eye. Charlie squeaks and hops back onto the couch.

 _Save me,_ Kevin mouths over his mother's shoulder.

Claire steps forward to take some of the bursting duffel bags from over his shoulder as Mrs. Tran heads inside, slightly mollified by Cas's offer of pumpkin spice coffee. "Hey, Kev. Ready for family drama?"

Kevin resituates his remaining bags and rubs feeling back into his shoulder. "What do you mean?" he says warily.

"Don't worry," Claire says. "This is the fun kind of family drama."

Kevin doesn't look convinced. "The same 'fun' you said raiding the blood bank last year would be?"

"Even better," Claire says. "Dean got turned into an eighteen-year-old."

Kevin's eyes go round. Then they curve in glee. "Oh man," he says. "I am _so_ upgrading my SD card for this."

 

Benny brought his camper with his truck for the girls to sleep in, since their rooms get commandeered for all the guests. The Trans take Claire's room, and Sam and Amelia take Emma's, and Garth and Bess take the guest room. Benny doesn't technically need to sleep, but he claims the living room to get his twice-a-year cable fix of Food Network, since he doesn't have cable at his cabin, and Charlie camps out in the camper with Claire and Emma and eventually Kevin, who flees Emma's room to escape his mother's snoring.

The problem is, Claire kicks, so after only about half an hour, he's startled awake by a kick uncomfortably close to his groin, and he rubs his eyes and stumbles outside into the dark. It's probably about three a.m., and he doesn't plan to do much more than just get a little bit of air before heading inside to maybe conk out on the armchair in the living room, but then he hears voices coming from the back of the house.

He creeps around the side of the garage, heart pounding stupidly loud in his chest.

"-- _chère._ " The voice is Benny's, and it's accompanied by a creak of wood, like he's settling down on one of the back porch steps. "How're you doin' with all these people overrunnin' the house?"

The voice that mumbles "fine" is Emma's. He's pretty sure. He tries to remember if he saw her lying on Claire's other side with her bag of flour when he left the camper, can't quite recall.

"Bull," Benny says mildly. "I been smellin' people's blood for decades now, and even for me this many people all gathered in one space is damn near overwhelmin'."

There's no reply.

"Our talk got me thinkin'," Benny's voice says quietly. "You're getting' older. Stands to reason some urges might be gettin' stronger."

Emma gives a sort of strangled laugh. "Am I getting the sex talk right now?"

"We both know what this is," Benny says, gentle.

Another horrible laugh. "It won't _stop_ ," she says. "It used to just be sometimes, and now it's just--it's almost every night--"

"Sshh," Benny murmurs. "You're all right. I got you."

"I wake up, and I'm so hungry," she whispers. "I feel sick with it. I don't even want to eat, but I--"

Kevin feels awful, overhearing this conversation. He wants to leave, wish he never left the camper, that he just stayed there and let Claire kick his balls to mush, but if he moves now, they'll hear him. They can probably smell hints of him, already. He's suddenly horribly aware of their inhumanity in a way that makes him fiercely uncomfortable.

"This why you put up that fuss about not wantin' to go to college?" Benny's saying now.

Emma makes another choked sound. Benny hums; there's a sound like he's rubbing her back.

"It's not gonna get better," she manages. Her voice sounds like her teeth are clenched together, her breaths unsteady. "If anything, it's going to get worse. It's best if I just--if I--"

There's a creak. It's the screen door opening, and then Dean's sleepy voice saying, "What're you two doin'?" and Kevin freezes even further.

"Nothin," Benny says. "Claire went and kicked Emma clear outta the bed again, is all."

"Oh." Dean yawns. "You want me to go kick her back?"

"Nah, we'll get her back tomorrow," Benny says. "Emma's gon' camp out in the living room with me, in the meantime."

"Okay." Dean yawns again, and there's the sound of movement, people standing, and going inside.

Kevin's only just sighed a breath of relief when Benny comes around the side of the house.

He freezes.

Benny doesn't look surprised. "Hey there, Kev," he says mildly.

Kevin raises a hand. He gives a stupid wave and a weak attempt at a smile. "Hey."

Benny smiles back, no teeth, but somehow it feels like he's baring them anyway. "Reckon you best get on back to bed, now."

Kevin flees.

 

The next day is a blur of cooking and dish-washing and trying to arrange all the chairs in the house around the dining room table in a way that will fit all of them. Dean, Mrs. Tran, Benny, and Bess take turns in the kitchen, with Dean taking point on pie-baking and Benny and Bess dealing with the meat, leaving some raw cuts out for her and Garth.

The whole house is a ruckus of good smells and chatting voices, laughter and Sam's soft iPod playlists. Emma and Claire leave around midday to take two of Dean's pies to the retirement home, taking Kevin with them, and Dean notices, but doesn't pay much heed to, the glances Kevin keeps shooting back at him as he climbs into the back seat of Cas's Honda.

"How long have they been driving?" says Mrs. Tran, narrowing her eyes as Claire shuts the driver's door behind her and starts the ignition.

"Long enough, Linda," says Cas, passing them on his way to the dining room with a big box of Amelia's inherited silverware. "Would you like to come help me with these?"

Dean doesn't think much more of it, starting to prepare the stuffing, but that evening, during dinner, as they sit shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee, squeezed in around the table, and Sam tries to get them all to say what they're thankful for, only to be undermined by Dean starting to pass around the perfectly whipped mashed potatoes, Dean watches the way Kevin's eyes flick often across the table to where Emma sits with Claire, and an idea begins to sprout in his head.

It grows after dinner when everyone settles into the furniture in the living room, close and cozy, for the first Christmas movie of the year, some stupid Hallmark channel one called _Christmas Mail_ or something equally dumb. Claire and Charlie cuddle in all close on either side of Emma on the loveseat, kicking Charlie's microfleece Dr. Who blanket over their legs, and Emma looks pained, forced into so much contact, and Kevin scoots closer on the floor, eyeing them.

"Hey, Cas," he says later, as they stand in the kitchen doing all the dishes that won't fit in the dishwasher, which is a lot. The sounds of _Christmas Mail_ , and Amelia's snarky comments on it, and the ensuing laughter from her audience, drift in from the living room. "You think Kev's crushing on Emma?"

Cas pauses in wiping his towel in circular movements around a plate. He's still in his carefully selected holiday wear, a sleek dove-gray waistcoat and periwinkle-colored tie above his slacks, an apron tied on over all of it. He deliberates.

"That's your _probably not_ face," Dean says.

A smile touches the corner of Cas's mouth. "I wasn't aware I had such a face."

Dean grins back. "Good thing you have me here to tell you, then."

"Do I have a _Dean, one of the things I am most grateful for is you_ face?"

Dean looks startled for a second. Then he says cheekily, " _One_ of the things?"

"Yes," Cas says serenely. "I am also grateful for our family. And coffee. And grape jelly."

Dean huffs at him.

"And my Honda."

Well, _that_ is just inexcusable. Dean takes his soapy hands out of the water and flicks the potato-flecked water from them onto Cas's front. Then, as Cas looks down with raised eyebrow at the flecks darkening his waistcoat above the apron, Dean sets his warm soapy hands against Cas's chest and drags them down his front.

His palms reach Cas's waist, and he looks up. Cas is looking back at him, his eyes as blue as his tie. His hands slide up Dean's arms, and cups the backs of his elbows.

The air between them is warm. Warmer where the damp spots from Cas's shirt touch Dean's, body heat radiating through them like the air from the oven when Dean had opened it to check on his pies. (Which were awesome, by the way.) One of Cas's thumbs is stroking the jut of Dean's elbow, unconsciously.

Dean feels himself leaning closer. His eyes sliding shut, his mouth falling open, expectant.

When nothing touches his lips, he opens his eyes. Stares at Cas, whose eyes are only inches from his, searching Dean's face.

"Cas," he says. Half impatient, half uncertain.

Cas looks more than half uncertain. "Are you sure you're all right with this?"

"Cas," Dean says on an exhale. His eyes slide shut again, and he pulls Cas in by his belt loops. Pulls back after a long, warm moment of sliding lips. "I only _look_ eighteen."

Cas doesn't say anything.

Dean smirks, a little. Runs his tongue across his lip. "That's your _I'm not convinced_ face."

"It is," Cas says honestly.

Dean pulls him back in. "Let me convince you," he murmurs into Cas's mouth as he teases it open with his own.

 

Hours later, he disentwines himself from Cas's hold and slides out from under the covers.

All the bedroom doors are closed. A faint, shifting light comes from the living room as he pads down the stairs in the sweat pants and t-shirt he pulled on: Benny is reclined back in the armchair in front of another Hallmark movie on the TV, his head tilted back and mouth open, snoring faintly, like an old man. Dean thinks he must actually be dozing, or something close to it. He shifts, slightly, snore faltering, before going still again, and Dean smiles. A memory is filtering back into his mind, of waking last night and stumbling outside to follow the voices he heard outside. Of Emma and Benny on the back porch, talking, and telling them to go to sleep, before stumbling back into bed, and lifting Cas's arm to crawl beneath it again, and Cas shifting a little more fully over him, the warmth of his chest and arms sealing out the cold.

He shuffles into the kitchen, touched by some vague impulse to glance out the window as he fills a glass of water. His eyes graze across the backyard, the shadowy lines of it illuminated by the faintly glowing solar lights Cas put along the back porch, and that's when he sees the figure sitting by the big oak tree.

He slips out the back door. Moves hunter-silent across the frost-stiffened ground, and the feeling of dread in his stomach solidifies into a hard knot when he sees the familiar pajamas, the fingers dug into messy blonde hair.

"Their heartbeats are so loud," Emma says into her knees. "Benny, I can't--"

The back door creaks quietly behind Dean. He freezes, and Emma whips around. Her eyes are gleaming yellow.

They stare at each other in the near-darkness.

"Emma," Benny says from behind Dean.

His voice is cautious. Emma's intent to bolt is written in every taut line of her body. The bloodless pallor of her face, as it all rushes to paint the skin around her eyes dark and wild.

Dean hears the back door open and shut again. He doesn't turn to see who it is, but the familiar wood -fur-leather smell that clings to Garth and Bess reaches his nose. He hears them pause on either side of him, ranging themselves to make a loose line as Benny moves up to stand next to him.

Emma's eyes flick back and forth between them. They're dimming, the yellow of them dulling, and in their place is left a look of betrayal, and dread. She looks back and forth between them, and last of all at Dean, and the look on her face then is the one from Seattle, nearly two years ago now, when she looked at Dean and said, _please don't let him hurt me._

Except it's hidden behind something worse this time. A resignation and a relief. Stark there on her face, in the slow downward sweep of her eyelashes and the shaky breath she lets out.

"Hey," he says. Finally finding his voice. "Emma. Em--"

"Hey!" comes a shout from behind him. And then Claire's shoving past him in her big turquoise terrycloth robe, Pyg strapped to her front in the dumb baby papoose Amelia brought them as a joke. "Leave her be!"

"Hey now, Claire," Benny begins in a low, soothing voice, reaching for her.

Claire yanks away. There's a snarl then, and several shouts, and then a blur of motion Dean gets shoved away from, Benny's big hand pushing him out of the way, and Claire shouts, "--stupid head out of your ass and let me _help_ you--!" and her angry shouts, and Emma's. Then they're on each other, they're fighting, Emma's snarling, and there's a gleam of silver and Dean's insides try to punch out of his body--

Then Cas is strides the fray, the porch light flickering on behind him, and hauling them apart, him and Benny and, to Dean's surprise, Kevin; they're hauling Claire and Emma apart, and they're panting at each other, and red blood gleams dark and startling on their faces from angry fingernails, and yellow glows in Emma's eyes.

It takes a minute of panting angrily in Cas's hold for Emma's eyes to fade back to hazel. For her breathing to unsnarl from being harsh and fierce; for her eyes to tear away from Claire. When they do, her gaze creeps down, away, ashamed and humiliated. Then her eyes go wide and horrified, and Dean follows them down to see Pyg lying in the snow, torn open by a neat cut near his top, horrified.

After a long moment, Cas loosens his hold on her arms. She crouches down, and starts to scrape the flour from the snow, tries to scoop the clumps up in her fingers. The white covers her arms, puffs up onto her pajama pants legs and her face, and there are new dark spots of wetness forming in the white flour, plopping down as they roll off the tip of Emma's nose.

"I'm sorry," Claire whispers. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," and she sets down the blade in her hand, and gets onto her knees, too, and tries to scoop Pyg back into her hands, too.

 

Benny and Emma leave in his truck. Dean doesn't ask where they're going.

It sinks into him, as he files back into the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen with everyone else, that they might not come back.

Guilt pours through him. All these weeks Emma's been struggling with this and he's been too preoccupied with his own shit to notice.

"Dean?" Garth's next to him. "Can we talk?"

He finds himself in the living room. Sitting in the couch, with Cas next to him, and Sam perched on the arm, hands clasped between his knees.

Bess and Garth are on the loveseat. Garth's legs are bouncing nervously, his long pale fingers restless on his knees, and he jumps to his feet. Starts to pace.

"Emma called us a few months back," he says. "She asked me to find her a way to drop off the map. I'm kind of the go-to on that kind of stuff now, with Frank Devereaux gone."

He looks back at Bess over his shoulder, nervous. She nods at him, and he squares his shoulders. Looks back at them. "I told her I wouldn't do it unless she told me what was going on. We wanted to help her. And she--she wouldn't say a lot. But she's…"

"She's been having cravings." Bess's voice is quiet, but clear. "For human flesh."

Dean digs his palms into his eyes. His fingernails cut deep, hot furrow into his skin. He sees that look on her face all over again, the face that asks him not to hurt her behind the one that says he should.

"I told her we were gonna help her," Garth says. His voice quavers. "I said we'd find a way to fix it, and--we've been looking. Bess'n'me, we've been--"

"We’ve looked _everywhere_ ," Bess says. "For how to fix it."

"The Men of Letters didn't have much, in their bunker," Garth says. "But I've been--you know I've been poking around in Cuthbert Sinclair's old things."

Dean's fingers curls into fists against his face.

"He…caught an Amazon once." Garth's very pale. "The--the less said about it the better, I think."

"It sounds as if Emma's cravings are because she never completed her pact with Harmonia," Bess says quietly. "The pact was opened--" She holds up her arm, tracing the invisible shape of Emma's Harmonia mark there, "and it's still open because Emma never ate her fath--your flesh," she says awkwardly, "and sacrificed it to Harmonia."

Silence falls over them.

"We think it's been getting progressively worse," Garth says after a while, "because she's coming of age."

"Age?" Sam says. His voice is taut. His hands are fists, too, at his sides.

"Her second birthday," Dean says numbly. "It's in two months."

"Every two years." Sam lets out a breath. "That's when the Amazons come back out to hunt."

Garth nods.

Sam breathes out a quiet _shit_. He turns away, hands dragging through his hair.

Cas shifts forward on the couch. "What will happen? At that time, if she doesn't complete the pact?"

Garth shakes his head. "We don't know," he says miserably.

"It could be," Bess says in a small voice, "that she won't have a choice in not completing it."

They all fall silent again. Dean knows they're all thinking of Emma's yellow eyes, the red bleeding out around them.

_Their heartbeats are so loud. I can't--_

"Does she know all of this?" Cas says quietly. "Emma. Have you told her?"

Bess nods.

A sound escapes Dean. His fingers dig harder into his scalp, because all this time his kid's been holding her knowledge and her feelings close and shameful the way he never, _never_ wanted her to have to do.

He wants to shout. He wants to beat his brains out. He wants to dig his fingers into his skill, his guts, and pull all the soft parts out. He wants to tear out the parts of him that have failed, over and over, to take care of the people who need him most. He wants to peel them out and give them to her.

"Dean," Bess begins.

"Okay," he says hoarsely.

"What--?"

"Okay," he says again. Lifts his head. "She can have it. What does she need?" His arms? His feet? All four of them? He'll give any of it. She can take all of it.

Bess looks horrified. "Dean, no--"

"I saw the dads' bodies," he says. "I know the parts they took away. Does she need all of them?" He's still holding them out, his arms and his feet, like a marionette with its strings held taut.

"It's not enough to take a piece," Garth says quietly. "The father's life that goes with it, that's the part that goes to Harmonia."

He falls quiet.

Dean's heartbeat is loud in his ears. He tries to think past it, and can't quite manage. He lowers his arms back to his sides.

"We're still looking," Bess says. "There's still--grimoires--we haven't even found all the things that Sinclair stashed away. All his logbooks and experiments and…" She trails off, looking wan and tired.

"Can you bring them to us?" Cas asks abruptly. "The ones you haven't read yet. We can begin to look through them."

Garth stands up immediately. "We've got three curse boxes full of them. I'll hand them off to you," he says. "And me and Bess'll go back to Sinclair's, get more."

Cas nods.

 

By Sunday afternoon, Benny and Emma still haven't come back. Dean pores over the horrible things in Sinclair's journals, trying to distract himself from wondering if they will. If Emma Dean to keep her safe, if she trusts him not to kill her; if she won't try to finish herself off to save them all the trouble.

He feels sick with the anxiety of it. He shakes and trembles and digs his knuckles into his eyes, his brow, his teeth.

"Dean," says a voice, and he looks up. Hand moving automatically to cover the grotesque, careful sketches in Magnus' book of a dissected lamia's internal anatomy.

It's Kevin. He has his duffel bags over his shoulder.

"You leavin'?" Dean's voice comes out scratchy.

"Yeah," Kevin says. He makes a weird, unhappy movement with his shoulder. "Gotta go back to school."

Dean chews on his lip.

"Look, I--I still have the Leviathan tablet," Kevin says. "Hidden. I didn't see anything on it about Amazons before, but new Words of God seem to have a way of appearing on those tablets depending on what you need from them. We're gonna go get it from where I stashed it. I'll take it back with me to school, see if I can find…" He shrugs, "anything."

Dean chews harder. He doesn't want Kevin to put his life on hold all over again to re-enter the horrible, migraine-riddled state he slips into when he reads the tablets. But--this is his _kid_ they're talking about.

"It's okay, Dean," Kevin says, reading the struggle on his face. "Really. It's okay."

Dean chokes. He hauls Kevin in, and the hug is fierce, and hard.

"Thanks," he grits out.

"Yeah, yeah," Kevin says, and thumps Dean on the back before letting go.

It's about an hour after he and Mrs. Tran leave, Mrs. Tran taking a few of the grimoires with her to search, that Benny's truck pulls back up. He and Emma get out, silently, and head up the house.

Cas is waiting for them when they get to the door. He pulls Emma into a hug.

Emma doesn't quite reciprocate. She just lets herself be hugged, her eyes downcast and distant.

 

On Monday, Cas takes them all to school. He parks, and he gets out, and with Dean and Emma they walk to the Home Ec classroom. He carries Pyg in a plastic grocery bag; he has been taped shut again with tape, but Pyg still exhales little gasps of flour whenever he bumps against something, and Cas already has the white residue from one of them on his blazer.

Mrs. Jablowski looks up from her desk when he knocks on her open door. Her eyes take them in, all three of them, Cas with his bag, and Dean and Emma looking hangdog behind him, Emma's ears dull pink as she looks at the floor and Dean's expression defiant but sad as he stares straight ahead.

"Good morning," she says, pushing back from her chair and heaving herself to her feet with a hand on her belly. Cas moves forward to help her, and she raises a hand to let him know she doesn't need it. "Would you like to come in?"

Cas glances back at the children. "I would like to speak with you alone for a moment, if that's acceptable," he says, turning back to Mrs. Jablowski.

She nods, and he shuts the door carefully behind him. Sets Pyg on one of the desks.

Mrs. Jablowski nods as he unties the bag and pulls it down to show what has happened to the flour child. "I see."

"I am here to…" Cas struggles for a moment. "I understand that this was a school assignment. But this, what happened to Emma and Dean's baby, was not in any way their fault. I wanted you to know this."

Mrs. Jablowski eyes him piercingly, her arms coming up to cross over the rounded curve of her belly. "Whose fault was it?"

"Mine," Cas says immediately. "Something happened which, as a parent, I should have prevented. I am…" He hesitates again, then compresses his lips, "ill-suited to raising children."

Perhaps more pain touches his voice than a human considers appropriate for the discussion of a child that is not really a child but only a flour bag, for Mrs. Jablowski gives him a look that is simultaneously just as piercing as before and much, much softer.

"We all make mistakes," she says, "with our kids."

Cas's throat feels very tight.

"The important thing as a parent," she says, and waits for his eyes to meet hers, "is to keep going. If we give up on ourselves, we're giving up on them."

Cas's hands curl at his sides. He nods, once.

"Good," Mrs. Jablowski says quietly. "I'll talk to Dean and Emma now. You have a good day, Mr. Winchester."

 

Emma doesn't show up at lunch. Dean gets his food, and spends the rest of the period looking for her. She's not playing hacky-sack with the guys, or up in Yearbook with Claire, or even with Mrs. Jablowski working on the extra-credit project she assigned them to make up for Pyg's injury. She doesn't show up to Math, either, and by then Dean's starting to freak out. He calls Claire, and Cas, and neither of them have heard from her.

"I'm leaving," Dean says. "I'm gonna track her down, God, _why_ did I let them disable the GPS in their phones."

"Dean, calm down--"

He can't. He can't, because he shouldn't even _be_ here, anyways, wasting his time on math postulates when he should be researching how to keep his kid from going Wonder Woman Rougarou. He doesn't know what he was fucking thinking--

"Dean," Cas says, perhaps sensing he is about to hang up. "I love you."

Something tears inside him. Something painful, something forced too wide. He grits out, "Love you, too, man," and shoves the phone into his pocket, wheeling around to head for the parking lot.

His shoulder collides with some kid in a letterman jacket. The guy shoves him off, and Dean stumbles into someone's open locker. "Watch it, queer."

Dean wipes his mouth, straightening. Then he punches the kid in the face.

He feels the skin on his knuckles split, and then the fist that slams into his own face. He ducks and punches the guy right in the stomach, and after that it all becomes a blur of blows and fury and shouts.

 

The office door flies open. Cas strides in, and stops dead the minute he sees Dean in the chair outside Chan's office, holding an ice pack to his eye.

He drops down in front of him. "Dean."

"Hey."

"What happened?"

"Nothin'."

Cas purses his lips. He reaches up and peels the bag of ice from Dean's eye, inspecting the bruising underneath. He presses carefully along the ridge of his eyebrow and then his cheek, and Dean submits to the treatment, staring over his shoulder.

"You find Emma?" he mutters.

"I was called about both of you," Cas says, and that's the moment the office door swings open again, and Emma enters with Burke. She has a trickle of dried blood coming from her nose, and Burke's still gushing a fountain from his own, holding his hand cupped over it.

"The fuck did you do?" Dean shoves to his feet. Is nearly to Burke before the resource officer gets between them. "The fuck did you do to her you fucking asshole--"

"DEAN!" Cas shouts.

The principal's office door opens. The two kids Dean fought with skulk out, flanked by the football coach, and Principal Chan stands in her doorway, for a moment. Then she says, "Novak-Winchesters in here, please."

"Something has to be done," she says when they've filed in. "This is unacceptable behavior. Both of you have been engaging in violence. Both of you have been skipping classes. If you don't wish to be here, you may as well not come at all."

"Principal Chan--" Cas begins sharply.

She looks toward him. "Is the other Mr. Novak-Winchester aware these things have been happening?"

A flush climbs up Cas's neck. "Of course."

"Forgive me for saying so, but we didn't have so many problems when he was the one coming to meet with me regarding your children."

Color burns in Cas's face. He looks _guilty_ , of all things, and Dean burns with rage. _Cas_ is the one who's been keeping their family together this whole time. Cas is the one who made Dean go after Emma and Claire in Louisiana in the first place. The one who insisted, over and over again as Dean lay awake freaking out over what the hell he was doing, that Dean could do good, that he could _be_ good and not screw kids up the way he's screwed up everything else he's ever done; the one who's convinced Emma over and over of the same thing in all the many moments Dean hasn't been mature enough or patient enough or selfless enough to do it himself.

"You don't know shit," he snaps at Chan. "Cas holds this whole fucking family together, and if you're gonna sit here and insult him you can just piss off."

Chan looks at him for a moment. Then she lifts her pen.

"Three days of suspension," she says. "Both of you."

 

"Go ahead," Dean says once they're in the car. He has the ice pack to his face again. "Yell at me. I don't care."

"I have no wish to yell at you, Dean."

Cas's voice is tired, and that hurts worse than any anger. Dean stares out of his swollen eye, and every part of him stings.

"This is my fault. She's right. I'm--I'm very poor at parenting, without you."

"Did you not hear me?" Dean nearly yells. "You don't have anything to do with all this shit. This?" He shakes the melting ice pack, spattering drops of water across the dashboard. "This is just what I _do_. It's who I am."

"This is not who you are," Cas says. "You are not violence. You are more than it."

His eyes slide to the rearview mirror, and Emma sitting silently in the back seat. "Please," he says. "Please don't simplify yourselves to something you aren't."

 

The next day, Dean rolls over in bed. Cas is gone, and Claire, and when he goes downstairs, the slant of light through the windows shows it's late, probably closer to nine than eight.

Emma's sitting at the table in her pajamas. She has a bowl of Cheerios in front of her, but she's just pushing her spoon back and forth in it. Pyg sits on the other side of the table, next to the cereal box. He's significantly smaller than he used to be. Someone, probably Claire, has pulled a brown yarn beanie over his head, hiding his rip.

Dean slides into the chair across from Emma's. He scratches his hands absently through his hair, curling his socked toes on the cold floor, and looks out the window. The yard is white with a layer of snow. The weather's been fairly mild over the past few days, but pretty soon they'll probably be up to their chins in white and cold, and he turns back to Emma. "You wanna go to the park?"

She looks back at him. "What?"

"The park. We'll take Pyg."

"We're not supposed to go to the park," Emma says slowly. "We're suspended."

"Em," Dean says. He feels, suddenly, the same strange, who-gives-a-shit exhilaration of freedom he felt in his year before Hell, knowing nothing could touch him that was worse than what was coming. "What're they gonna do? Report us?"

Emma stirs a few more circles in her cereal. Then she says, "I'll get dressed," and heads upstairs.

 

They drive the Impala, and it feels like coming home, being behind the big wheel again. She rambles up into the parking lot, snow crunching under her tires, heat blasting from her vent and _Kashmir_ from her speakers.

They climb out of the car. They're the only people at the park, under the bone-gray December sky, silent except for the icy wind and the rattling chains of the swing sets. Dean tugs his ski cap more thoroughly over his ears and leans over to tuck Emma's maroon old-lady sweater more snugly under her chin.

Pyg's **FLOWER BABY** blanket is in his bag with him. They trundle over to the swings, kicking through the snow in their boots, and Dean arranges the blanket to make a nest in one of the little-kid swings, the ones that have leg holes. Emma puts Pyg in it, tucking the edges of the blanket around him, and Dean pulls the swing forward to let it go.

The air bites his exposed nose with frosty teeth. He cups his gloved hand over it, breathing warm air out through his scarf, and moves around behind the swing so he can push it gently when Pyg comes arching back.

Emma's eyes follow Pyg's movement, back and forth. For the first time, it occurs to Dean that he's never pushed Emma on the swings. He used to do it for Sammy all the time, when they were kids, and then later, for a while before he grew too old, for Ben. But he realizes he doesn't even know if Emma's ever been on a swing, before, and he catches Pyg with a hook of his fingers and catches the chain of the normal swing beside Pyg's.

"Hey," he says to Emma. "Get on."

She shakes her head. Her arms are wrapped around herself in the cold.

"C'mon. You'll like it, I promise."

Emma hesitates a minute. Then she hoists herself onto it. Dean holds the chain steady as she settles herself. "Ready?"

She nods. Her hair sticks out from between her hat and scarf, dull gold under the grey sky.

Dean pushes her gently once. Twice. Until she and Pyg are swinging back and forth at nearly the same time.

"Kick your legs out," he instructs her. His fingertips against her back, pressing in and pushing her forward. Once. Twice. Three times. "Then tuck 'em back in when you come back. Like that, yeah."

Pretty soon Emma's pumping her legs. Sailing higher, and higher, until Dean's laughing and ducking out the way to avoid a kick to the head when she sails backward.

"See that?" he says. "Told you you'd like it."

"It's like flying," Emma says on her next arc backward. She sounds wondering.

"Better," Dean says. "Way better."

They swing until their fingers are numb inside their gloves. Then Emma climbs off and insists on pushing Dean, and he shows her how to twist around in the swing, how to hold on and tilt her head back while the chains untwist themselves and spin the swings around. Beside them, Pyg's plastic grocery bag flutters in the wind.

Afterward, they drive through a donut shop for hot chocolate. Emma cradles hers in her hands, and holds her face over the steam and inhales it, her eyes fluttering shut. When she opens them, there's a thin yellow rim at the edges of her irises.

Dean aches.

 

He lets her drive the Impala to her shift at the nursing home that afternoon. She keeps shooting him these suspicious looks on the way there, like she's trying to figure out what alien decided to make him its pod-creature, and he snips at her to keep an eye on the road. She snips back that she _is_ , Dean. The thin yellow rims in her eyes don't disappear, but it don't get any bigger, either. He wonders if there's a way to stop them from growing, or if they're just going to keep getting bigger until Emma's birthday.

"What do you feel?"

She tosses a look over at him, startled. But it doesn't take her long to figure out what he means, and her face shutters over. "You don't wanna know."

"I do," he says. "All of this is my fault, Em."

"How?"

He lets out a breath. "'Cause I'm the one who could fix it."

Her face is still impassive. "How?"

Dean rolls down his sleeves. Peels off his gloves. Holds his arms out there, bare in his lap. "You want to eat me?" he says. "Do it."

The car slows on the empty road. Emma's hands are white on the steering wheel. "You'd let me do that?"

Dean's pulse throbs in his wrists. "Yes."

"How?" Emma says. "How could you let me--you _hunt_ Amazons."

"Yeah," Dean says, "and on the scale of things we've hunted, Amazons don't rate anywhere near the top of the Most Evil Monsters pile. You guys eat yours dads' meat. That's all. That's nothing. Ancient Romans used to do that."

"No they're didn't."

"Okay, maybe they didn't. But I'm pretty sure some ancient culture somewhere did. So." He shrugs, much more nonchalant than he feels. "This is something I'm willing to do."

"You don't get it," Emma says, sounding angry. "How could I ever look at Claire or Cas--how could I ever look at them again if I did that? How am I supposed to live with myself if I do that?"

"Em," Dean says. "How am _I_ supposed to live with myself if you don't?"

Emma's quiet for a long moment. Until she turns into the nursing home parking lot, and turns into a spot. Then she says, "I guess we're both fucked."

 

That night, Dean reads grimoires until he falls asleep. Their contents chase him into his sleep, chase him back out of it, over and over, as he wakes sweating under the sweltering heat of Cas's arm and the memory of bright yellow eyes and red teeth.

 

The days race away, made shorter by how quickly dusk falls each night. Dean reads grimoires until his guts are knots from the sheer cruelty Magnus inflicted and the thought that he could be one of the entries in the man's journals, or Emma. He pores over websites on his laptop until his eyes are grainy, dots filtering across his vision, his eyelids dragging shut every few minutes before he rouses himself again. Cas is little better, the dark circles under his eyes growing deeper and darker every day.

Emma spends more and more time at the retirement home, even after their suspension ends, like she can't bear to be at home. Benny tells Dean it's easier to tolerate old people's scent when you're hungry, that their hearts don't beat as fiercely, their blood isn't as fragrant; and Dean keeps his mouth shut for that reason alone, doesn't say anything when Emma comes home at nine o'clock, at ten; when she's already gone on Saturday mornings when they get up; doesn't say, _please, please, just stay with us; just for an hour can we be a family again._

 

The Saturday before reading week, Claire leans into Emma's room. "Hey. Come shopping with me."

Emma looks up from her history book. She's been reading the same paragraph for the past twenty minutes. "What?"

"You. Me. Shopping. I need a dress for the formal."

Emma grimaces. "Isn't that a you and Beatrice thing?"

"It's a me and whoever I want to come with me thing." Claire tosses Emma's jacket at her. "C'mon. I'll buy you cinnamon pretzels."

Emma looks back down at her computer.

Claire says quietly, "Please?"

Emma gets up.

 

With Thanksgiving over and Christmas approaching, the mall is packed. She keeps the sleeve of her hoodie over her nose, breathing through the fabric of it to filter out the smell of all the warm, close people. Claire says under her breath, "You okay?" and Emma nods, ears red with shame and anger. She shouldn't have agreed to come in the first place.

Once they get into the department stores it gets a little better, though, the air thick with the smells of make-up and perfume and cologne from the shiny, mirrored center of the stores. Emma grabs one of the Try Me cards sprayed with something from a pink diamond-shaped bottle and holds it close to her face, inhaling shallowly every time someone gets too close.

Claire is looking for a dress for the winter formal. There's about five million for her to choose from, all sorts of colors but mostly darker, subdued ones in champagnes or greens or burgundies. Emma hangs back, watching Claire pick through them, watching her ignore more than a few than Emma thinks would look good on her. "Why not this one?" she says, pointing at a strapless ice-blue one with white lace insets.

Claire makes a face. "Nope."

Emma pulls her sleeve from her face. "Why not?"

"Don’t like the color," Claire says carelessly, and moves to the next section.

Emma doesn't mention that Claire has two shirts and one jacket in exactly that color, just frowns and covers her nose again.

The dressing rooms are super-crowded. All the waiting chairs outside are filled by moms or boyfriends, which would make for an unbearably awkward atmosphere even if Emma _couldn't_ practically taste all their hearts beating on her tongue, so she tries to skulk off to houseware while Claire tries on her findings. But Claire gets a handful of her jacket and drags her into the dressing room with her.

"You're in charge of hangers," she says, and deposits Emma on the little stool inside the tiny changing cubicle. She promptly shucks her jacket off, handing it to Emma, and pulls her shirt over her head. Emma carefully zips up Claire's jacket and then folds her shirt as Claire shimmies into the first dress she picked, a slinky burgundy one with three-quarter sleeves.

"Okay," Claire says, and Emma looks up. They're both making the same critical look at the dress, and Claire lets out a laugh when she sees their identical expressions reflected in the mirror.

"That's a no," she says. "Next!" She unzips this dress off without warning, too, and Emma looks down again until it's dress is tossed onto her head. She folds it one-handed this time, holding the perfume card to her nose with the other.

Claire tries on four more dresses without much more success. Emma thinks the last one, a white one, is a keeper, but she's barely finished zipping the back of it for Claire before Claire's making another face in the mirror and jutting her spine out for Emma to unzip it again. "Nope."

Emma unzips it, then says, "Stay here. I'll be back" and slips out of the dressing room. The line of people who are waiting to try things on, most of them with dresses slung over their arms, look up hopefully, then turn listless again when they see the room behind her is still occupied. Emma squeezes past them with her sleeve over her nose to the dress section again. There's a royal blue dress next to the ice-blue one she pointed out to Claire, a little less Princess Elsa and a little more eighteen-year-old girl, and she riffles through them on her tiptoes until she finds Claire's size.

The line's gotten longer by the time she gets back. She squeezes past all of them, returning their suspicious glares with a fierce one of her own, and knocks on Claire's door. Claire lets her in. She hasn't bothered to get dressed all the way, just has her coat back on over her bra and underwear, unzipped and hanging open in the front.

Emma shoves the dress at her. Claire looks at it. There's something on her face that makes Emma's insides flip. Then she sighs and takes it.

Emma sits down on the edge of the chair again, looking down at her scuffed boots as she hears the silky _shuff_ of Claire pulling on the dress.

"Okay," Claire says.

Emma looks up. The dark blue looks almost unreal against Claire's pale collarbone and arms, and she's about to say "I'm awesome, you're welcome" before her eyes travel down Claire's shoulders to her arms, left bare by the dress.

"Oh," she says.

"Yeah," Claire says.

There are bright white scars on the insides of her elbows. The anti-angel sigils Claire drew there with Cas's blade, that night after in the cabin in the woods after Cas got her away from Naomi. Emma remembers stumbling over her on the front porch in the dark, the smell of blood and fear.

The perfume card bends in her fingers. She mumbles, "Sorry."

Claire shrugs, mustering a smile. It's really just a movement of her mouth, and Emma picks up the discarded dresses and puts them back on their hanger as Claire pulls off the blue one and pulls her jeans and sweater on.

"I promised you cinnamon pretzels, right?" she says when they've put the dresses on the reject trolley and are walking past the perfumes again. She snags a fresh card and hands it to Emma as they walk; it's Tommy Hilfiger and it smells horrible but Emma squishes it against her nose anyways, feeling like some punishment is in order. "C'mon."

"You don't have to," Emma says.

"I want to," Claire says. "Unless you don't want them." She watches Emma from the corner of her eyes; it's sharp, but it's also uncertain, suddenly, in a vulnerable way that Emma's not used to Claire being. "Do you…?"

"I want them," Emma says.

 

They settle down on a bench in front of Hot Topic with their pretzel nuggets. Claire sits sideways, her legs drawn up onto the bench and crossed yoga-style, watching the people who come in and out of the store as she chews. Emma sucks the cinnamon from her nugget with one hand and holds her perfume card with the other; it's not as necessary right now, thanks to the Hollister across from the Hot Topic.

"What should we get Dean for his birthday?" Claire says suddenly.

Emma gives her a _where did this come from?_ look.

"It's coming up," Claire says.

"Yeah, in _January_."

"Which is almost here," Claire says. "And we're kind of fresh out of ideas, since the whole de-aged spell we were going to try again this year is a no-go."

"Get him something from Hollister," Emma says, and they both snicker at the idea of Dean in a Hollister hoodie. Better yet, giving Dean a Hollister hoodie in a Hollister _bag_ , with naked dude pecs all over it.

"Maybe we can convince Cas to give him something from there," Claire says. "He'll have to wear it if it's a present from Cas."

"Polo shirt," Emma says automatically.

"Flip flops," Claire says.

"Polo shirt _and_ flip flops," Emma says.

"Epic," Claire says, and they dissolve into more snickers.

Claire pops another pretzel into her mouth. Emma drags one around in the cinnamon-sugar detritus at the bottom of the cup and puts it in her mouth, sucking on it in one cheek so that she looks like a chipmunk. They sit there for another few minutes, watching the people inside Hot Topic, and then Claire says, "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"For your birthday. What do you want?"

Emma looks over at her. Claire's looking at her expectantly.

Emma puts the perfume card over her nose again.

"You mean if I don't go Berserker?"

Claire kicks her. She's wearing one of Emma's pairs of steel-toed boots; it hurts. "I mean _when_ you don't go Berserker."

"In that case." Emma smirks. "I'd like world peace."

Claire kicks her again. Emma tips the rest of the cinnamon pretzels into her mouth in revenge, grinning at Claire as she chews.

 

Claire grabs her another perfume card for the bus ride home. It's from Bath & Body and it's not really perfume, it's a card smeared with lotion, but it smells good. Emma cups it around her nose with her sleeves as they ride the bus home, her shoulder bumping against Claire's on every right turn. It smells like flowers and fruit and something else.

"Do you remember what your mom smelled like?" she asks Claire.

Claire looks over at her. Her eyes are faded in the fluorescent bus light, the pores on her nose dark and visible. There is a pimple just coming to a head on her cheek, red and angry beneath her skin.

"Sometimes," she says. "When I smell something that smells like her."

"Like what?"

"Gingerbread cookies," Claire says. "Wet beach towels. That cleaning stuff that's not Fantastik, what's the other one that starts with 'f'--"

"Fabuloso."

"Yeah. Fabuloso."

They're quiet for a while, as the bus stops to pick up a family that has a stroller that has to be folded up and lugged up the stairs. Emma watches the little girl hold tight to her mother's shirt as she's carried in her mother's free hand, her eyes big and liquid.

"Why?" Claire says.

Emma looks at her.

"Why're you asking? Do you want to see her?"

"Who?" Emma says. "My mom?"

Claire presses at the pimple on her face. "Yeah."

Emma doesn't say anything for a few moments. "Maybe," she says finally.

"Do you want her to know?" Claire says, and Emma has to look at her again for clarification. "That she--that this is happening to you. Because of her."

Emma looks out the dark window, past her reflection. "Sometimes," she says. "Mostly I just wonder if she ever felt this scared."

 

"Dean. _Dean_."

Hands shaking him. He jolts upright, grabbing them. Blinks sweat from his eyes, panting, until he focuses on Cas leaning over him. He drops back down onto his sweaty pillow, still gripping Cas's wrists. "What is it?"

"That's my question." Cas doesn’t try to take his wrists from Dean's grip, but he scoots closer so that his elbows and forearms are against Dean's side, more contact through his sweat-soaked shirt. "You were dreaming."

"Oh," Dean says unsteadily. "Good."

Cas studies him. His eyes are little more than gleams in the darkness. "What were you dreaming?"

Dean lets go of his wrists. "Nothing." It was something with Emma, but Cas was in there, too, both their mouths stretching in that way the Leviathans' did when they were about to feed. The three of them in Purgatory together, and trying to figure out who to put in his arm to take out, and Cas telling him to leave, _go, Dean_ , and Emma with teeth sinking into his sleeve as she stared up at him--

He sits up to dig his palm into his forehead. "Nothing," he says again.

Cas's hand is flat on his back, warm through his cold damp shirt. Dean struggles forward, peeling it off over his head, and Cas sits up, too, hand sliding from Dean's back. He pushes it through his own hair, looking haggard.

"Shit," Dean mutters. "Sorry I woke you up." He makes to climb out from under the covers and go downstairs to finish the night on the couch.

"Dean." Cas catches his hand and pulls him back down again. Dean stays half standing for a minute, just his knee braced on the mattress, before Cas reaches up to sift a hand through his sweaty hair, and then he sinks back onto the bed, leaning into Cas as cool air reaches his scalp.

He sits like that for a long time, boneless, head tipped forward on his chest to the ministrations of Cas's fingers.

"Sure this is what you signed up for?" he mumbles after a while. "Human basket case and his screwed-to-hell kid?"

" _Our_ kid," Cas says quietly. His fingers press reproachfully into Dean's scalp. "Don't speak about her like that."

Dean laughs humorlessly to himself for a second before he stops. Looks up.

Cas meets his eyes.

_Our kid._

They're both sweaty and gaunt and gross and Cas hasn't shaved in three days, but Dean dives into him, delving hard with tongue and teeth. Pulls Cas down onto him, looking for more of that warm, relieved feeling, like if he gets his mouth close enough against Cas's, his tongue deep enough, he'll find more of it, will find enough of it to hide inside forever. He's screwed up, he's screwed everything up so bad; if he could've just kept his damn dick in his pants; if he'd just--

"Ssshhh," Cas is murmuring against his mouth. "Sshhh, Dean."

"Fuck me."

Cas's hands going tight around his arms before loosening. "No."

Dean hisses. He shoves his hips up against Cas's hips, clenching his knees around him.

" _Dean_." Cas's fist goes tight in his hair. "Don’t."

"Why?" he snarls, wrenching his head until it stings.

"Because you want to hurt," Cas says. "Please don't make me do that."

Dean goes still. Then he tilts his head to meet Cas's eyes. His husband's mouth is taut, his jaw clenched, all of it trembling, and all the rage dissolves from Dean, replaced with a shame that he's been so self-absorbed again, blind in his want, his need.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," kisses across Cas's face, his shoulders, his neck, hiding his face in the stubbled skin. "Cas…"

Cas pulls the covers back over them. He slides his hands under Dean's shoulders, and pushes his face into the crook of Dean's neck, breathing warm and slow and unsteady, and Dean falls back asleep with his heart beating against Cas's.

 

On the second to last day of school before winter break, he waits outside the garage for someone to pick him up. It's nearly nine, and he swore to himself he'd get through at least a hundred pages of reading tonight, and there's an old Celica thunking up to the curb.

He huffs out a sigh, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets as a lady ducks out of the car.

"Please," the woman says. "Please tell me you're still open."

Dean shakes his head. He was the one to lock up tonight, and any other night, he'd stay late to help her, but there's no time. Emma's irises were nearly half-yellow this morning, and Dean saw foundation caked around her eyes. "Sorry."

The woman bites her lip, looking back at her car in desperation. The movement brings her face into the light, and Dean blinks.

"Hang on," he says. "Hayley?"

She spin back to him, eyes startled. That's when a new set of headlight beams swing around the corner, and the Impala pulls up to the curb behind the Celica. Emma gets out, coming around the car to hand the keys to Dean so he can drive.

She stops when she sees Hayley, whose eyes go even wider. "Oh my God," she says. "You--"

Emma's eyes, which were on her feet, focus on Hayley. She blinks. "Hi." Her eyes swing to the Celica, and her brow lifts. "You're still driving on the spare?"

"I know," Hayley says, guiltily, and then she seems to remember Dean. "Wait. How do you know…?"

Dean remembers the whole looking-eighteen-years-old thing. "Uh, long story," he says. "I'm--you remember those guys who helped you with that Prometheus guy? Shane?"

Hayley's eyes go even huger. Her eyes flick behind her to the car, and for the first time, Dean can see the small silhouette of a kid's head, slumped asleep against the frost-rimed window.

"That Oliver?" he says.

"Yes," Hayley breathes. "How do you--"

"I'm Dean," Dean says. "The hot brother. I'm just sort of…under an aging spell right now. It's a long story."

Hayley stares at him. Then she looks at Emma, and gestures between them. "And you--?"

"He's my dad," Emma says. "Sort of."

"Oh," Hayley says faintly.

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose. "D'you wanna come with us? I just gotta eat something. Then we'll come back here and I'll get your car figured out."

"Um," Hayley says. "Sure. Okay."

 

Oliver watches them with huge eyes the whole ride to the house after Hayley rouses him to bundle him into the Impala's back seat.

"So," Dean says into the silence. "How do you know Emma, again?"

"She changed our tire for us," Hayley says. "A while back, when we had a flat."

Dean looks over at Emma. She's looking out the window, at the swirling white snowflakes lit by the Impala's high beams. "Yeah?"

Hayley nods. "It was one of our first days in town, I had barely any cash on me--she kind of saved my ass."

"Yeah," Dean says. "She's pretty good at that."

Emma's eyes startle toward him. In the dim lights from the dashboard, the yellow in them looks like just a darker shade of hazel.

Dean reaches over and ruffles her hair softly. "And Sioux Falls? Last I knew, you guys were in Montana. What gives?"

Hayley looks over at Oliver. His eyes are as moon-wide in the darkness of the car as ever. He closes them, though, and says in a soft voice, "We wanted to start over."

"Yep," Hayley says, and Dean recognizes that catch in her voice, the tautness of it, as she smiles at him and looks at once unbearably happy and like her heart is going to break. He's felt it enough himself, these past few years.

When they get home, he shoves a frozen pizza into the oven. Then he hunkers down in front of Oliver, who still looks pale and withdrawn, hanging back from everyone else. "Hey there, buddy," he says, sticking out a hand. "I'm Dean. Remember me?"

Oliver looks at his hand. Then he leans into his mom.

"Aw, c'mon," Dean says. "No Kung Fu Grip?"

Oliver doesn't crack a smile. Instead he just looks confused, which, hey, is still a change from his solemn expression.

"What?" Dean says. "You never watched G.I. Joe?"

Oliver gives him a clueless look. So do Claire, Cas, and Emma.

"Aw, c'mon!" Dean says. "[ _Hands that hold on, with a kung fu grip_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbob4vEmzEg)\--" He sings the jingle, then breaks off, looking at them in dismay. "Seriously, nobody knows that?"  


Cas has his phone out. "It says here that a kung fu grip is obtained through many hours of solitary and dedicated training--" 

 

"What've I told you about Urban Dictionary?" Dean grabs Cas's phone and slides it into his own pocket, wincing at Haley. "Sorry."

Claire's studying Oliver. "How old are you?"

"Eleven."

"You look like you could be my little brother."

Oliver's displeased face stops just sort of a scowl, as if he's too polite to scowl at a host. "I'm an only child," he informs her, and Cas hides a smile behind his ink-smudged hand.

Emma's standing in the kitchen, getting cups and mugs out of the cabinet. Pyg sits on the counter next to the microwave, wrapped in a new red and green outfit with tiny jingle bells sewn to the collar. Oliver slides off his chair and goes over to stand by her. She glances up, guarded, and they just sort of look at each other for a minute before Emma hands him a cup and heads to the sink to fill a mug for coffee. He follows her.

"Not fair," Claire says plaintively. "Emma gets the flour baby _and_ the demi-Titan little brother?"

Cas sighs. Dean kicks her leg under the table.

"Sorry," she tells Hayley.

Hayley still looks vaguely shell-shocked. "It's okay," she says faintly, and gives a little laugh, looking around. "So…you already know our story. What about you guys?" She makes a little smile that’s probably supposed to be joking. "Run into any more gods lately?"

Dean smiles automatically back. Then he pauses, the smile sliding from his face.

"Holy shit," he says. " _Cas_."

Cas gives him a startled look as Dean scrambles up out of his seat, chair clattering over behind him. He races to the front hall, where his phone sits on the front table, charging. He grabs it and presses one of the speed-dial numbers, then darts into the living room, where one of the girls' computers sits, lid closed, on the coffee table. "Claire, I need your password!"

"Use your own computer!" she says, coming into the room. Cas and Emma are just behind her, and they exchange confused glances.

"Claire--"

"It's _Khaleesi_ ," Emma says, and makes a face back at the glare Claire shoots her. "Dean, what're you doing?"

"We need to talk to Garth," Dean says, typing. The musical tone of Skype dialing fills the room. "Sam? Hey, get to your computer, we need to Skype you."

"Remember when he thought Skype was a dating service?" Claire mutters to Emma. "He's come so far." She pretends to wipe away a tear of pride. "We taught him so well."

"Dean's time as a teenager has been beneficial to his acceptance of technology," Cas says.

Dean is shooting them all dagger-eyed looks as he brings up two Skype windows. "I can hear you, you know."

"Then you should feel flattered by how proud we are of you," Claire says.

"Whatever. Garth!" Dean turns back to the computer. "Can you hear us?"

"Yeah." Garth looks a little skeletal in the dim lighting of the room he's in, his eyes wide and face pale. "What is it, Dean? Did you find something?"

"What are they looking for?" Hayley asks Emma in an undertone. Emma gets a pained look, and Oliver bumps her side with his head.

"I just had a thought," Dean says as Sam's face comes up in the other window. "Harmonia's a Greek goddess, right? So instead of all this dicking around trying to break the hold on Emma, why don't we go straight to the source?"

Sam already has a bitchface on. "Dean, are you saying we should summon Harmonia and just _tell_ her to let go of Emma?"

"Not the big H herself," Dean says. "I'm saying we try a more diplomatic approach. We summon Artemis and ask her to help us."

An incredulous breath escapes Sam. "Dean. The last time we saw Artemis, she tried to kill us."

"Yeah, but she left without finishing the job. That's gotta count for something."

Sam gets a _no, it totally doesn't_ expression. Dean ignores it.

"Look," he says. "I'll summon her by myself. If she says no, I'm the only one she kills. It's a win-win."

"There is nothing victorious about that scenario," Cas says.

"Exactly," Sam says. "And ignoring that, what the hell makes you think _Artemis_ would be able to help us, much less want to?"

"Because she and Harmonia kind of complement each other!" Dean says. "The Amazons are all about not needing men, and so's Artemis. Right? Doesn't she have a whole group of lady hunters who've sworn off men so they can focus on being bad-ass?"

"Dean," Sam says. "Listen to what you're saying. She and Harmonia are similar. So why would she help us take Emma out of Harmonia's control?"

"Because I think Artemis knows what it's like to have a shit parent!" Dean retorts. "The last time we saw her she tried to kill her dad to stop him from killing someone she loved!"

Everyone is quiet, both in the Novak-Winchesters' living rooms and in the Skype windows showing Sam and Garth.

Then Garth says, tentatively, "It might be the best plan we have, Sam."

Sam lets out an explosive breath. "Fine," he says. "Fine. I'll find the closest bone of a worshipper to you. Just--can you wait for us to look into this? Please?"

"You've got until we find the ingredients, Sammy," Dean says, and closes Skype.

 

"C'mon," Dean says to Hayley and Oliver after they eat. "We'll go back to the shop, and I'll get your car fixed up. We're just gonna be spinning our wheels until we find the ingredients we need again."

"There's a shop in Rock Rapids that sells those fulgurite necklaces," Hayley says hesitantly. "For the lightning ingredient."

Dean looks over at Cas.

Cas still doesn't look happy about this plan, at all, but he nods. His classes have already ended for the semester, and he has nearly finished grading all his students' exams. "I'll go there in the morning."

 

In a completely unsurprising emergence of Murphy's Law, the store in Rock Rapids is out of fulgurite. Dean orders rush delivery of a piece off the internet instead, and spends the rest of the day glaring at everything that moves.

Claire is unmoved by the intensity of his displeasure. "How convenient," she says. "That means you guys have nothing better to do than come with me to the winter formal tonight."

Emma goes pale. Dean glares harder.

"Claire's right," Cas says. "I think we could all use a break from researching for one night."

"Going to a dance is not a _break_ ," Dean says. Emma nods.

"Are there still tickets available?" Cas asks Claire, ignoring them both.

In answer, Claire holds up three stubs of paper decorated with holographic blue snowflakes.

"You suck," Dean says.

"Also," he adds, motioning back and forth between himself and Emma. "We don't have any dressy clothes. So."

"Maybe _you_ don't," Claire says. She goes into the coat closet and pulls out a hanger draped in an opaque plastic garment bag, shoving it at Emma. "From Charlie."

Emma looks terrified. She pushes it back at Claire.

"Emma," Cas says softly.

She looks at him. Her eyes are wide again, pleading and uncertain like before they went to Joseph's party, except this time they're more yellow than not.

"I don't want you to do anything you don't wish to," he says. "But I would like for you to have this memory."

Emma swallows. Then she goes upstairs, holding the garment bag tightly over her arm.

 

Claire's date, who Dean vaguely recognizes from the lunch table where all the soccer players sit, comes at six. By six-fifteen, they're done with all the pictures Cas decides to take, and Emma actually ventures downstairs, peering over the banister. "Are they gone?"

"Yep," Dean says. "Hey, you look nice."

"Thanks," she says. Then, after a beat, like she's remembering to be polite: "You too."

He makes a face, looking down at himself. He's in a black dress shirt and a green tie borrowed from Cas; it's nothing near as fancy as the full-on tux Claire's date was wearing. "I'll do, I guess."

"You look beautiful," Cas says firmly. Dean makes a face at him.

"Handsome," he says.

"Handsome and beautiful," Cas says. He sets his camera down on the dining room table and holds his hands out to Emma. She comes closer hesitantly, a pair of high heels dangling from her fingers. Her dress is brown with green accents, and she's holding a green- and brown-jeweled headband that Charlie must have sent with it because it matches so well. "Do you have your hairbrush?"

Emma hands it to him. He turns her gently and begins to brush her hair out. Dean sits in a chair and starts to put on his slightly-too-big dress shoes, watching.

Cas separates Emma's hair into strands and plaits it into a French braid. He pulls the headband gently over her forehead and then turns her around again, studying her.

"Beautiful," he says.

Emma makes a face. She squirms. Her eyes look less yellow beneath the fake topaz.

"Let's get some other adjectives in here," Dean says. "Bad-ass. Awesome." He stands up, fidgeting. "All right, are we gonna get this over with or are we gonna get this over with?"

"Pictures first," Cas says, and pushes them both into the living room, in front of the fireplace where he made Claire stand with her date.

"Do we have to?" Emma says.

"Hey, you already got outta posing with Claire and David Beckham," says Dean, who had been forced to take a picture with Claire and her date. "Quit complaining."

"Do you two want to look as though you're not actually frightened of being bitten by the other?" Cas says dryly.

Dean and Emma look at each other. Then Dean sets his hand awkwardly on her shoulder and Emma does the same to him. A snort of laughter escapes Cas; he clicks the shutter.

"All right," he says. "I want one with each of you."

"Dean first," Emma says in relief, shoving him forward.

Dean's not sure where to put his elbows, or his hands. He glances at Cas for help as he leans their shoulders together, not sure if he should put an arm around Cas's shoulders, or his waist, or neither. Cas looks back, not attempting to wrap an arm around him, just pressing their shoulders more closely together, and the camera clicks.

Dean looks up. "We weren't even looking at the camera!"

"So?" Emma says. "It looks good this way. Captures your whole, y'know, staring vibe." She shows it to them on the view screen.

"It does," Cas says in satisfaction. He puts a hand to Dean's shoulder, leaning in to brush a kiss to his gelled hair, then looks at Emma. "Your turn."

Emma makes another face but shuffles forward anyway. Cas lifts his arm, not commanding but just enough that Emma can slip under it if she chooses to, and she does, tentatively sliding her arm around her waist. Dean grins.

Cas clears his throat. "Dean."

"Oh." He remembers he's supposed to be taking a picture. "Yeah. Say cheese."

"Cheese," Cas says obediently, as Emma just raises an eyebrow at him, and that's the picture they get, which makes Dean laugh and order them to stay put until he gets a better one.

 

The drop-off line in front of the civics center where the formal is being held stretches around the block. Dean and Emma watch anxiously through Cas's window, Emma's eyes glowing and Dean's knee bouncing.

Cas sighs as they pull to a stop, again.

"Maybe we should get out," Emma blurts out. "And walk."

Cas eyes her in the rearview mirror. "You won't make a run for it?"

Dean's eyes dart guiltily to her. It was certainly the first thing that jumped to his mind.

"Um," she says. "No."

"Claire would inform me if you did."

"Dammit," Dean says.

"Whatever," Emma says. She opens her door. "Um. Thanks for the ride, Cas."

"Call me when you are ready to be picked up," he says, and his voice is serene, but Dean hesitates before opening his own door.

"Hey," he says, twisting in his seat to look at Cas. "Soon as I'm--me again? You and me are going to the fanciest shindig you can find."

"Shindig?" Cas says. Humor pushes aside some of the wistfulness in his expression.

"Shindig," Dean says firmly, and darts forward to sneak a kiss onto the corner of Cas's mouth. Then he ducks out of the car and up onto the curb. He and Emma stand there shifting from foot to foot until Cas's Honda pulls out of the line and back into traffic. Then they stand there for a minute longer, swallowing.

"Ready?" Dean says finally. His hands are tight fists inside his pockets.

"Not really."

"Yeah. Me neither." They start walking anyway.

"Can I tell you something?" he says when they're only a block away.

Emma makes a noise that sounds like _okay_.

"I've never been to a school dance."

Emma's high-heeled stride falters. She throws a startled look over at him. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Why not?"

"I didn't, um--" He thinks of Robin and Sonny and _he just said to tell you he had a job, said you'd know what that means._ "Just never had time for it, I guess."

"Yeah, sure you didn't," Emma says, looking amused rather than convinced. "It's really because no one ever asked you to one, isn't it."

He makes a face at her and snaps her hair band against her head. She squawks and kicks him with one of her high heels. He spends the rest of the block wincing and limping, rubbing his shin every few steps.

"Hey," she says just before they round the last corner before the civic center. "Dad." He stops, startled, his eyes flicking over to her. Hers are dancing in the red glow from all the car brake lights. "Wanna go to the dance with me?"

Dean bursts into laughter.

 

 

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

"Are those the pictures?" Claire demands. "I want to see them."

Cas spreads them out on the table so they can all look at them. There's Claire with her date in his tux, and Emma with Dean, both of them grimacing at the camera and looking like _American Gothic_ sans the pitchfork, and then a few from Claire's phone, and Dean's, of Emma with her feet kicked up on a foldable chair while she sits at a tinsel-festooned table playing cards with Donny and Joseph and of Dean grinning next to Marcus with a big red mustache from the cup of punch in his hand.

The doorbell rings. Dean careens out of the dining room and dives for the front door.

Cas's lips compress. He begins to gather the pictures back up. Garth comes into the dining room, a big heavy spell bowl under one thin arm and a small box under the other, and sets them down on the table where the pictures were.

"We ready?" he says.

"As we'll ever be," Cas says.

Dean comes back into the kitchen, carrying a UPS box. He pulls a knife out of his pocket and slits it open, shaking out a chunk of fulgurite and a snow of packing peanuts. He sweeps them off the table and looks up at Garth, who nods.

 

When they drop the match into the spell bowl, Artemis appears in a flash of silver. Her hair is still black as tar, though there's white streaked through it now, pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her eyes are blank and unimpressed as she looks at them.

"There was a time," she says, "that hunters treated their goddess with more respect."

Garth swallows, his Adam's Apple bobbing. "The summoning was very respectfully meant, Miss Artemis. We're sorry to bother you--"

"No you're not," Artemis says. She turns on her heel, and her eyes dig right into Emma and Claire where they stand in the corner of the dining room.

Dean moves in front of them. Artemis twitches her hand, and an invisible force pushes him a foot to the left, his boot soles scraping across the floor.

"You," she says to Emma. "You're the one all this fuss is about?"

Emma nods.

"So if I'm angry about being summoned," Artemis says. "My wrath should be directed at you?"

"Yes," Emma says defiantly.

"I see." Artemis turns back toward Dean. "Speak your request."

"We were hoping," Cas says carefully, "you would be able to release Emma from Harmonia's hold."

Artemis looks at him impassively. After a moment, she says, "It is true that I could claim the girl as part of my hunt. But I have no quarrel with Harmonia. I will not steal one of her own."

The hope fades from Emma's yellow eyes.

"She's _not_ one of Harmonia's own." Dean's voice quakes with rage. "She's _her_ own! Her own person."

"What a naïve view of the world." Artemis glances at him. "Have you gained a child's brain to go with your ungrown body? None of you belong to yourselves."

" _I_ will steal from Harmonia," Cas says.

Everyone turns at his quiet voice. Cas stares back at Artemis, unperturbed.

"What?" she says dangerously.

"I will steal from Harmonia," he repeats. "I won't be the first mortal to have stolen from a god. Tell me how to do it."

Artemis steps forward. Her boots click on the floor, closer to Cas. "Such bravado for a man whose body is not even his own." Incredulity is contemptuous in her voice. "Does a beggar dare to steal a rich man's bag?"

"That's exactly what he does."

Artemis lets out a breath. It's nearly a laugh. "You angels. Always thinking you can replace your God."

"This," Cas says, "from a goddess who loved the Titan that sacrificed his place on Mount Olympus to give humans the freedom of fire."

His voice is not unkind. But Artemis's eyes narrow with wrath. The air around her seems to turn cool. Then she vanishes.

In her place is a small, very fragile-looking parchment.

 

"This doesn't match up with what y'all said about the Amazons being born from Harmonia and Ares," Garth says a while later.

Sam shakes his head where he and Garth are bent over the parchment Artemis left. One of them has brought in one of those professional-looking magnifying glass swivels that autopsy labs have, and Sam's peering at the Greek writing on the parchment through it. "It doesn't. Dean, this says Harmonia was Ares' _daughter_."

"So?" Dean paces, restless. "Why do we give a fuck?"

Cas places his hand on Dean's arm. Dean doesn't let himself stand still for more than a few seconds before pulling away.

"Because if this is right, Harmonia's power comes from the Amazons' fathers because she was cursed by both of her own." Sam's scanning his handwritten notes beside the parchment. "Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus. When he found out about Harmonia, he was pissed. He sent her a necklace that turned her into a snake."

"That's why--" Dean motions at his own eyes, indicating the way Emma's turn red and yellow, "these?"

"I guess," Sam says uncertainly. "Man, Harmonia got majorly shafted. It sounds like Ares refused to help her get changed back because he said it was Aphrodite's fault for seducing him." He keeps reading, his mouth moving silently. "This is a messed-up situation."

Garth nods, turning his hat over uneasily in his hands. "Look at the last part, Sam," he says quietly.

Sam continues down to the lowest part of the parchment, looking back and forth between his translation guide as he writes. His brows grow steadily closer together, until they're a single line and the skin around his mouth is white. He looks up at Dean.

Dean feels like he's about to jump out of his skin. "What."

Sam looks ill. "If this is saying what I think it's saying, the only way for Emma to completely _break_ the link she has with Harmonia is to take control of it by having a child and eating its flesh herself."

The blood drains from Dean's--well. Everything.

Cas's hand is vice-tight around his arm. "She has to eat her own young?"

"To assert her own claim." Sam looks sickened and apologetic. "It's…I might be translating it wrong."

Beside him, Garth shakes his head. "That's what I got out of it, too," he mutters.

"We can't tell her," Dean says immediately.

"We have to tell her," Cas says.

"Cas!" Dean spins on him. "We tell her this, she's just going to feel like even _more_ of a monster. I know that--I know after everything that's gone down with your dad and your brothers that--I know you think it's worse to be left in the dark. But trust me--there are some things _you're better not knowing_."

Cas says nothing. He stares at his hands, the skin around his mouth turning white.

" _Cas_ ," Dean says. Desperate.

At last, Cas nods.

Dean wilts with relief. "Good."  He runs a hand through his hair. "Let's just--look, let's go have something to eat. Figure out what we're going to do."

They head into the kitchen, Garth picking up the parchment carefully and placing it in the box they found to keep it safe.

In the silence left behind, Emma and Claire sit on the staircase, eyes wide. ~~~~

Claire tosses and turns in her bed that night. She used to think that was a stupid saying, but now she knows it's one of those cases where it's a cliché because it's true.

She finally kicks back her sweaty covers and pads out of her room. Emma's downstairs, sitting against the couch in the shifting lights from the TV, staring at it without watching it.

Claire sits next to her.

"Leave me alone," Emma says.

Claire ignores her.

"Go," Emma says, and though her expression is frustrated, her voice is listless. Like she doesn't really expect Claire to listen to her.

Claire shuffles closer on her butt. She wiggles her head into the space between Emma's drawn-up knees and her stomach, and insinuates it in her lap. Her nose is smushed uncomfortably against Emma's thigh, but she doesn't move it, just digs her shoulder into Emma's hip. Emma smells like wood smoke and not much else.

Emma closes her eyes. Then she tips her head forward against her knees, and her hair falls down around Claire, and they sit there, in that shifting darkness, until Claire falls asleep.

 

When she wakes up, it's with an idea.

She scrambles out from under the blanket somebody's draped over her shoulders. The kitchen is empty, and when she darts out onto the freezing front porch to check the driveway, Cas's car is gone.

She runs back inside to shove on her Uggs and one of Emma's leather coats. Then she grabs Dean's keys from the front table and climbs into the Impala.

 

Emma's escorting Mr. Kagawa to the day room for his morning nap, which he likes to take in front of the window so he can fall asleep watching the snow fall, when she sees Dean's car roar into the parking lot. It nearly fishtails, it's going so fast, and she feels a flare of irritation and desperation, too, because this is the place the smells and sounds of people both her the least, the place she can still talk and be talked to without thinking of how the person talking to her would taste, how warm their flesh would be in her mouth. The elderly women and men at the retirement home smell of the chemicals used to keep them alive and little else, and their hearts beat too slow and too weak to pound a tattoo in her ears. This place is safe, and here Dean has come to tear her from it.

She turns away from the window, stubborn and defiant. Goes over to the table where Mrs. D'onofrio is pinning a tiny red stocking to Pyg's green scarf.

"It’s crooked," she says with a scowl.

"Not crooked," Emma says. "Jaunty."

"Jaunty my ass," says Mrs. D'onofrio, but she stops trying to make it hang straight. She starts to fuss with the bits of tinsel around the armrests of her wheelchair instead.

"Emma!"

She turn automatically. It's not Dean in the dayroom doorway; it's Claire, in her pajamas with Emma's aviator jacket pulled over her hoodie. Her hair's a mess, all flat on one side. She looks the same way Emma imagines Antoinette from _Wide Sargasso Sea_ looks in her attic.

Her eyes aren't on Emma. They're on something behind her--Emma turns to look--they're on Pyg.

Claire strides forward. She takes Pyg from Mrs. D'onofrio, who  gives an indignant "Hey!" and grabs Emma's hand with her other, hauling her toward the door.

"Claire," Emma begins angrily.

"This is important," Claire says urgently, and it's so out of character for her, to come out somewhere in her pajamas and Ugg boots and with her hair flying everywhere, that Emma lets herself be pulled outside.

"We'll come back for the car," Claire says, sliding into the Impala's driver's seat. Dean's nowhere to be seen. "We've gotta talk."

Emma closes the passenger door after her. The Impala's interior is nearly as cold as outside; she leans forward and turns on the heater. "About what?" she says warily. She doesn't want to talk about last night. She doesn't want to talk about anything. She just wants to stay with the old people until she can't anymore, and then she wants to slink off somewhere and not let any of them see her become what she's going to become.

"What they said." Claire has Pyg in her lap. She holds him under the sleeves of his jumper, her long pale fingers curled around him protectively. "About you needing to have a kid and eat it. Do you think--do you think maybe--"

It only takes Emma a handful of seconds to realize what she's getting at. Her eyes flick to Pyg, incredulous, then back to Claire, even more incredulous. "You mean--"

"I know," Claire says. "It's stupid. Like--really stupid. But--I mean. He's your kid. Basically."

"In… _thought_ ," Emma says, because she can't think of any word that accurately describes it, and "thought" isn't really accurate either. "Not in real life!"

"It's the thought that counts."

"You can't be serious," Emma says weakly.

Claire's patience snaps. "No, Emma, I came out here in my pajamas to fuck with you. Of course I'm serious, you moron!"

Emma just gapes at her for a minute longer. Then she finally collects herself enough to say, "Then--what're we supposed to do?" Her eyes slide to Pyg again. "Tear him open again and eat the flour?"

She looks miserable as she says it, as if the very prospect makes her feel guilty. Claire sternly zips her jacket, trapping Pyg inside where Emma can't try to steal it, in case she gets some idiotic idea of trying to save her flour baby because saving her isn't as important as keeping a damn ripped-up flour bag intact.

"Let me take care of that," she says.

 

But when they get home, the house is in a tizzy. Dean doesn't even seem to have noticed Claire took the Impala; he comes up out of the basement holding a box of books and barks at them distractedly to get dressed and get in the car, they're headed to Lebanon.

She and Emma exchange glances. "But--"

"But nothing," Dean snaps, and it's times like this that him being under the spell to look eighteen is really weird, because Claire can't imagine any other scenario in which she'd feel intimated by an eighteen-year-old. "Just _go_ , please?"

Garth and Bess are already at the Men of Letter bunker when they get there. The Trans get there a few hours after the Novak-Winchesters do, and by the time Benny arrives, that night, everyone's carved out their own study cocoon in the library or the war room, surrounded by every book on supernatural creatures Garth and Sam were able to find in the bunker library and Cuthbert Sinclair's personal one.

"Benny," Claire says immediately, catching Emma's eyes. "Me'n'Emma need some air, will you drive us to the store?"

Benny glances at Dean. He's not even paying attention, looking over some translation with Garth. Benny tilts his head in a nod.

"What're you two devils up to?" he says when they get back outside and pile into the cab of his truck. It's warm as the inside of an oven even though Benny regularly walks around Sioux Falls in December in nothing but his pants and an undershirt.

"We wanna make a pie," Claire says. "Get everyone's spirits up a little."

She's not sure why she lies. Most likely because Benny'll tell Dean what they're up to if she tells him, and she doesn't want to see the look on Dean's face if it doesn't work. She doesn't want to see the look on Emma's, either, but she doesn't know how she would explain stealing Pyg, and pouring his insides out, otherwise. If Claire hadn't already known how sadly attached Emma's gotten to the bag, the fact that she kept carrying him around even after the school semester and the flour project ended a few days ago would have made her aware.

"All right," Benny says, slow drawl and slower side-eye, like he knows she's full of something, he's just not sure what yet, and he pulls the gearshift into drive.

 

By two in the morning, nearly everyone has headed to their rooms for some shut-eye, or simply fallen asleep where they're reading. Cas has already nodded off in the stiff leather armchair in the war room, and Sam's slumped forward over the table until Dean nudges him and sends him blearily off to his old bedroom to join Amelia. The light is still on in the crack under Kevin's bedroom door, and Dean doesn't doubt he's still awake, reading with his highlighter and pen clenched between his teeth the way he so often did with the Trials. Charlie's fallen asleep with her cheek on her elbow in front of her iPad scanning through all the archived Men of Letters files she encrypted, and Garth and Bess are murmuring quietly in the corner over something Bess found. It's a one-eighty from the grand total of two people he had trying to help him get out of his crossroads contract, and Dean feels a gratefulness and an ache so strong he's nearly sick with it.

He crouches down next to Cas's chair and nudges him awake. "What…?" Cas says sleepily, eyes fluttering open, but Dean shushes him.

"Everything's fine," he says. "Just taking you to bed."

"No, I can stay up." Cas wipes his eyes.

"Cas. C'mon." Dean levers him to his feet and supports him halfway to Dean's old bunker room before Cas's body seems to get the message that he's awake and starts to walk himself.

"Where are the girls?"

"Sleeping," Dean lies.

"We need to get them Christmas presents," Cas murmurs. "I haven't gotten anything for them yet--"

"Yeah," Dean says, and lowers Cas onto the bed. There's still only the one pillow, and he leans over Cas to grab it, drag it over under his head. "Here you go, I got your shoes." He unlaces them and hauls the blanket over Cas. They started the bunker's heater again as soon as they got here, but it's still a little chilly. "We'll go out tomorrow."

Cas doesn't let go of him. "Come to bed," he says tiredly.

"No, Cas."

"Dean."

"I can't--sleep while this is happening," he says. "I'm not gonna let this be Emma's last Christmas. It's only gonna be her second one, for fuck's sake."

Cas looks up at him sadly. Then he begins to lever himself back out of bed.

Dean shoves him back down. "Just go to sleep," he mutters. "God."

"Not if you don't," Cas says, staring up at Dean from where Dean's hand holds him pinned. "I'll go make coffee."

"You can't," Dean says.

Cas looks sleepily frustrated, as though he can't understand what Dean's saying because he's still so tired. He rubs his eyes again with one hand, chest muscles shifting beneath Dean's hand. "Why not?"

Dean sits down on the edge of the bed and lets his head fall forward. Doesn't want to tell Cas how he passed by the kitchen a few minutes ago, drawn by the unmistakable scent of fresh apple pie, and saw Claire and Emma standing at the counter staring down at a foil tin of pie next to an untaped, torn-open Pyg. He watched them both take deep breaths of the warm, apple-spiced air and then Claire cut a big wedge of pie from the tin and put it on a plate in front of Emma. Emma took a big bite and chewed and swallowed and nothing happened.

He knows nothing did, because Claire shuffled forward and wrapped her arms around her, and Emma let her.

He presses his forehead to Cas's warm shirt and breathes.

 

 

The kitchen is sparkling clean when they all reconvene there the next morning. There's no sign of Pyg, or any of his remains, save a dash of flour that got missed on the fridge handle, and for the first time in nearly a month, Emma doesn't have him sitting in her lap as she silently stirs the oatmeal around in her bowl at the table.

They must all notice the absence, but no one says anything, although Cas frowns when he notices the flour on the fridge, rubbing his fingers together and glancing back at all of them. For that, Dean's grateful.

"There's nothing in here to eat," a scruffy-looking Kevin says upon peering inside the fridge, and then the cabinets. He looks at the instant oatmeal packets sitting between Claire and Emma. "And I'm _not_ eating oatmeal."

"Good, 'cause I'm not sharing it with you," Claire says. Her voice has more of an edge than usual.

"C'mon, we'll make a grocery run," Sam says, levering himself up from his own seat. He winces, sore from just the short time he spent asleep slumped over at the war room table. "Who's coming with me?"

"No offense, Sam, but your car always smells like wet dog," Kevin says. "I'm out."

Dean blinks.

Cas looks at him at the same moment Dean looks at him.

"Oh my God," Claire says. "I thought you guys called them already!"

Dean ignores her. There's hope bubbling up in his chest, and he tries to stamp down on it as he pulls his phone out, clambers up the stairs to the front door two at a time. Lets himself out into the December snowdrifts surrounding the bunker's entrance in his thin pajama pants and shivers there, breath emerging in white clouds as the other end of the phone rings.

It finally picks up. "Dean?" says James' voice.

"James!" Dean says. "Hey, man, we got a problem."

 

Portia's livid when she hears the whole story. "And you didn't think to mention this--oh, I don't know-- _as soon as it happened_?"

Cas puts a hand on Dean's arm before he can flare back that Portia's a hell of a lot better at causing problems than fixing them, so of course he didn't think of her. "We're telling you about it now," he says. "Please. Do you know of anything that can help?"

There's a pause. James says something low to Portia that doesn't quite carry across the speaker phone, and Portia says something just as muffled back.

"What!" Dean says. "What!"

"Give us a day," James says. "There's--something we have to look into."

"We don't _have_ a day," Dean begins, but the line goes dead.

 

Portia and James arrive the very next day, when everyone's settling into the war room to eat the casserole Benny made for dinner. The door buzzer cuts through the clink of silverware and hushed voices.

Dean pushes up from his seat and bounds up the stairs to the bunker's main door. Claire slips out of the kitchen to get Emma from where she's holed up in their room.

Portia and James stand on the front step, looking grim in bulky winter coats.

"We might have something," James says. "But you're not going to like it."

"Well," Dean says with a humor he doesn't feel, "it can't be _much_ worse than Emma needing to have a kid and eat it."

He steps back for them to come inside. Everyone's stayed in the war room except Claire and Emma, who have come out and are standing in the doorway, watching. The yellow parts of Emma's irises seem even bigger in the dim gold lamplight.

She pulls away when Portia comes forward to cup her cheek. Portia takes the hint, stepping back, but she looks hurt.

They settle in the library because it's the only place with enough chairs for everyone. Emma's twitchy on the edge of her armchair, keeps glancing toward the door like she wants to escape. Claire sits on the arm of the same chair, socked feet braced on top of Emma's knee as though to keep her from running.

"The spell that's on Dean right now," James says without introduction. "We can't break it. But there may be a way to transfer the energy to Emma."

When Dean opens his mouth to ask what good that's going to do, James holds up a hand. "If we can reverse your age to prevent you from maturation," he tells Emma, "it might prevent the mark from maturing as well. If it doesn't mature, it won't demand satiation."

Cas is frowning. He looks over at Emma, who says, "Reverse it how far?"

James's shrug is a wince. "We have no way of knowing. Perhaps all the way to infancy, perhaps only to childhood. We can't control how many years backward you are reversed, but--" His eyes flicker to Dean and Cas, "it would be fairly permanent."

Silence. Then Sam says, "How can something be _fairly_ permanent?"

James points to the start chart on the table. Sam pushes it toward him, and James unfolds it. "Here is Uranus," he says, and no one laughs this time. "Here's Aquarius. The powers of each are currently ascending. If we attempt the transfer of the de-aging spell from Dean to Emma, we will be re-focusing a spell that has already been magnified by an Aquarius," he nods at Dean, "to another Aquarius." He nods toward Emma. "Chances are that whatever age Emma is reversed to, she will remain that age for," he winces, "at least 84 years."

More silence.

Then Emma says quietly, "And then I'll just revert back to this age and be stuck in the same situation all over again?"

James nods.

"Thanks." Emma gets up. "But no thanks."

She walks out of the room. There's the sound of her feet on the stairway and then the big iron door opening and closing behind her with a thud.

Cas starts to get up. Dean catches his arm and shakes his head. He gets up himself instead, grabbing his and Emma's coats from the hook in the corner.

It doesn't take too long to find her. She hasn't gone far, just up the rusted fire escape of the factory façade outside, sitting on the edge with her legs dangling over the side. Dean climbs it, rust coming off on his freezing fingers, and sits down beside her.

He waits for her to talk first. When she doesn't, he wipes his hands down his jeans, leaving brown-orange streaks. "There's probably worse things than being a kid for a hundred years."

Emma kicks the edges of her boots together. Clods of dirt break off and fall down, twenty feet to the ground. "Like what?" she says. "Watching everyone I know grow up and get old and die?"

He winces.

"Would I even understand what was going on?" she says. "Why everyone else was growing up and I was still the same. Would I understand why I was different?

"When that spell turned us into four-year-olds," she continues. "I kind of knew what was going on. But I really didn't. You know?"

Dean studies the orange streaks on his jeans.

"I was so scared. I didn't understand why my mom wasn't there and what I'd done wrong but I knew I'd done something. I knew I wasn't supposed to be like--what I was. I don't ever wanna feel like that again." Her voice breaks, a watery laugh escaping her. "Especially not for 84 years. God."

Dean's fingers curls in his jeans. He doesn't say anything.

Emma nods like she's agreeing with his silence. Her chin is tucked close to her chest, inside her scarf. Dean wraps an arm around her. Presses his head against her head.

After a minute, she says, "Benny said--if it happens. He said you'll--so he can come to Purgatory. With me."

Dean's arm tightens around her.

"Is it bad? That I don't want to tell him not to?"

Dean shakes his head against hers. Their hair whispers together.

"Em?" he says. "You know when I--when I went ballistic on you about college. After the SAT thing. You know that was--that was my crap, right?"

She stiffens. "It wasn't crap."

"It was," Dean says. "I spent my whole life with my dad cramming what he wanted me to do down my throat, and I turned around and did the same thing to you. I wanted you to go to college 'cause I never did, and that wasn't putting what you needed first, that was putting what I wanted first. I screwed up, and I'm sorry."

Emma's still for a minute. Then she puts her arm slowly around his waist and leans into him, her hand pressed over her nose.

"I'm proud of you," he says.

She says, "I know."

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Portia finds Dean in the war room. He's staring into space with a book in his lap, feet kicked up on the table, and his eyes are very old in his young face.

She sits down in the chair across from him. "I may have messed up."

Dean snaps out of whatever reverie he was in. "Yeah?" He cracks a tired smile, eyes focusing on her. "Join the club."

She cuts him a frustrated look. "I'm trying to apologize here."

Dean shakes his head. "Don’t."

Portia's lips purse. "Dean--"

"Don't," he says again. "I got to spend a lot more time with her than I would've otherwise. So. Maybe I'm the one who owes you something. Okay?"

Portia doesn't say anything. Dean swirls the whiskey some more.

"What are you going to do?" she says finally.

Dean takes a sip. Sets it down, lip under his teeth. Then he lets it go. "Told Cas to let her." He sits up in his chair, dropping his feet to the floor. "If it comes down to her or me…let her."

Portia traces her fingertip across the continents outlined on the table. "As far as parents go," she says after a minute, "you're not a bad one, Dean."

Dean's mouth curves sardonically. His eyes stay on his whiskey.

"You know what my mom did when she found out I was a familiar?" Portia says.

His eyes flick up.

"She just…let go." Portia touches the collar around her neck. "Gave me away. To the first witch who came looking."

In the yellow lamplight, Dean sees for the first time a glimpse of pale scar tissue beneath Portia's collar. "I thought familiars were supposed to do the finding."

"Yes," Portia says simply. "They are."

Dean nods. He pushes the whiskey across the table to Portia. She drains it. Then she takes one of the books sitting beside him and begins to read.

 

There's a knock on Emma's bedroom door. She sighs and pulls her pillow over her head. "Go away, Portia."

"I'm not Portia." Claire sticks her head in. "Is that why you holed up in here? Avoiding another why-didn't-you-tell-me angstfest?"

Emma pulls the pillow from her face, sitting up. "Maybe."

"Well, you're safe for now." Claire closes the door behind her. "She's in the war room having manpain with Dean or something."

"Manpain?" Emma says skeptically.

Claire rolls her eyes. "Whatever, something about their respective parental issues. I don't know, I decided to stop eavesdropping since it's kind of bitten us in the ass so far."

Emma doesn't crack a smile, just eyes her uneasily. "You shouldn't be here."

"Why?" Claire plops onto the bed with a bounce. "Worried for your maidenhead?"

Emma's lips thin. "Claire."

"I'm skin and bones. And all X chromosomes. You don't wanna eat me."

Emma presses her nose into her sleep hoodie sleeve and says nothing. Claire pretends not to notice.

"So, I won the auction for Dean's present a few days ago," she says. "And I ordered rush shipping because--well. And it came today, but…" She makes a face. Pulls a package from behind her back and pushes it across the bed to Emma. "It's kind of messed-up."

Emma picks it up with her free hand. It's a vintage G.I. Joe action figure in a box. It has an alarmingly intense mustache and green combat fatigue and nothing where his hands should be.

"Apparently," Claire says, "after a few years whatever special rubber crap they used to make that Kung Fu Grip thing sort of…disintegrates."

Emma stares at the action figure. The side of her mouth twitches.

"Go on," Claire says. "Make the masturbation joke. You know you want to."

Their eyes meet. Claire waggles her eyebrows, and a strangled giggle escapes Emma. Then another, and then they're both gasping with laughter.

"If you got turned into a four year-old," Claire says when they've finally caught their breath. "Or a cute baby or an ugly baby or even a bratty ten-year-old--you know I'd take care of you. Right?"

Emma falls silent, the last of her laughter fading into a sigh. "Yeah," she says. "I know."

Claire searches her face. "Then why is this not making you feel any better?"

Emma rolls onto her side in the bed again, pulling her covers back over her. "Good night, Claire."

Claire sits there for another minute. Then she sighs, loud so Emma knows how displeased she is, and leaves.

 

Cas finds her in the kitchen the next morning, staring into a mug of coffee. He doesn't say anything, just goes to the coffee maker to make a new carafe, switching out the cold mug in her hand for a warm one when it's done brewing.

She watches him pull on a sweater and his coat over the t-shirt and sweat pants he wears to sleep. "Where're you going?"

"Outside."

"Can I come?"

"Of course."

 

They leave through the garage. The big double doors' hinges creak fiercely as Cas pushes one open, but Cas doesn't seem to take any note of it, holding them open just long enough for Claire to walk out behind him. He leaves a boot he brought with him wedged between the door and jamb to keep it from locking shut behind him; Claire's pretty sure the boot is Dean's and wonders how many times Cas has used it for this purpose without Dean realizing.

There's a thin paved lane, liberally potholed and cracked, that leads from the garage down through the trees to the road. Cas ignores it, setting off into the overgrown underbrush of the forest that encircles the bunker to the south and east. They tromp through dead leaves and sticks and slush as the sky slowly turns orange above them until they reach a small clearing. Three beehives stand there in a rough triangle, each one as tall as her waist.

She hangs back as Cas walks toward them. All three are covered in black tar paper, and he crouches in front of each one to make sure that the staples holding the paper in place is still intact. Claire creeps closer, crouching down next to one and listening hard until she can hear the very, very quiet buzz of the bees inside.

When she looks up, Cas is watching her.

She shifts on her knees. "Is this what you and Dean came to do that one weekend in October?"

"Yes," he says. He hunkers down next to her, resting his wrists atop his knees. He, too, seems to be listening to the quiet hum of the bees inside the hive.

"Are they supposed to survive wintertime?" Claire asks. "Won't they freeze?"

"No." Cas creaks to his feet with his hands braced on his knees. He holds out a hand for her to pull herself up; she rises without it. "Look." He pulls the top cover of the hive away at an angle, just barely enough for her to peer inside to see the furry, swarming huddle of bees pressed together in the center of the hive.

"When winter comes, they crowd together like this," Cas says. "Each bee takes turns being at the outside of the swarm so that none of them get too cold to survive. It's called a winter cluster."

He lowers the hive's cover. Claire tucks her chin against her chest, inside the collar of her jacket. She sinks back into a crouch again, hands inside her pockets, listening to the steady buzz of the bees. After a moment, Cas drops down against beside her. She leans into him, their shoulders pressed together in the cold, and watches her breath rise in white clouds from her mouth.

"Portia," she says when she goes inside. "Can I talk to you?"

Portia gives her a suspicious look but allows Claire to lead her down to the armory. She's still in her clothes from the day before, dark circles under her eyes.

Claire turns once they're there, closing the door carefully behind them. She might feel gratified by the way Portia's eyes flick behind her as though made uneasy by being shut up in a room with Claire, but she has other things to worry about. "You said your mom gave you away to a witch."

Portia looks startled. Then impassive. "Have you never heard that saying 'curiosity killed the eavesdropper'?"

"Sorry," Claire says, and means it. "But it's Emma."

 _It's_ for _Emma,_ she means, and Portia sighs like she knows. "Yeah." Her eyes are still watchful, though, uneasy. "Where are you going with this, Claire?"

"Did they try to create a bond with you? To make you their familiar?"

"Where. Are you going. With this."

"If Artemis made a claim on Emma, it would have canceled out Harmonia's," Claire says. "What if Imade a claim? If we were each other's witch and familiar, would that cancel out her bond with Harmonia?"

Portia looks at her. Then she grabs her hand and drags her upstairs.

"We need to talk to you," she announces when they get to the kitchen. Cas is there, making another pot of coffee; Dean sits at the table with Sam and Emma, who has her nose practically touching the surface of a steaming mug of coffee. "James!"

James is already rushing in from the hallway. His hair is a mess; he is still in yesterday's clothing. "What is it?"

Portia touches his bare arm with her fingertips. His eyes swirl for a minute; then he stumbles back, blinking. "Oh."

"Yeah," she says.

James's gaze flicks to Claire, Emma, then back again. He doesn't look hopeful so much as concerned.

"What's going on here?" Dean looks back and forth among all three of them. He's already gotten to his feet, coming over to where Claire still stands.

"Claire had an idea about Emma."

Emma's eyes slide to her. They're very, very yellow. The circles beneath them are dark red instead of bruised purple.

"Yeah?" Dean says uncertainly. He stops walking, stays halfway between Claire and Emma. Cas comes up beside him, quiet and still in his sweater and coat over his pajamas.

"There may be a way to supplant Harmonia's claim without finding a god to do it. The spell I talked to you about yesterday--" Portia touches her collar.

Dean understands immediately what she's talking about. His eyes fly to Claire, outraged, betrayed. "No. No way."

"Wait," Sam says. "What are we talking about?"

James runs a hand through his hair. "There's a spell that can be used to bind a familiar to a witch."

Sam's eyes go to Portia. "I thought the familiar chose the witch…?"

"They do. They're supposed to." Portia shrugs like it could matter less to her, like she doesn't have a scar in the shape of a collar beneath the leather one. "But not everyone follows the rules."

"So it's dark magic," Cas says flatly.

"The magic itself isn't dark," James says reluctantly. "The way it's been _used_ is."

"Either way, you're talking about binding Emma to somebody! For life! And the witch'd be able to, what--draw on her to power their spells?" Dean looks at Portia, at James, at Claire. "No fucking way."

Emma clears her throat. Everyone's heads turn to look at her. "It's my choice."

"Emma," Dean begins, but Cas cuts them both off.

"Portia," he says. "Who would you bind her to?"

Portia and James both glance over at where Claire stands.

There's silence. Then Emma says, "No."

They stare at each other. Behind them, Dean stares at both of them, his expression dismayed.

James glances at Portia. "This isn't something that needs to be decided right away. On the contrary, I think it's something you need to talk about." He looks around at them with his dark eyes. "All of you."

"I agree," Cas says quietly.

 

Dean follows Sam to the bunker door. By some sort of silent agreement he was too shell-shocked to participate in, everyone who's not him, Cas, Claire, and Emma has decided to spend the night at a motel in town.

"I think we just wanna give you guys some space," Sam says quietly, pausing on the front step with Dean. He glances over Dean's head, at where Emma is sitting at the table, then back at Dean. "To talk, and… We're only twenty minutes away if you need us. Okay?"

"Okay," Dean says. "But Sammy--"

He breaks off. He doesn't know what he wanted to ask. Or maybe he does, but it's not a question that belongs to him, anyway.

Sam gives a half smile.

"They'll figure it out, Dean."

"I don't know what the right answer is," Dean says, a little wildly.

"That's because there isn't one," Sam says. "Neither of them are going to be wrong, no matter what they decide. And…" He hesitates, and closes the door so it's just him and Dean, on the front step, "you're going to support both of them, no matter what they decide. Right?"

"Of course," Dean says, indignant. As if there was ever any other option.

"Just." Sam gives him that same sad half smile. "Make sure they know that. Okay?"

"Of course," he says again. "Of course. Sammy, what…?"

Sam just shakes his head and pats him on the shoulder. Then he pushes the bunker door open again and clambers back down the stairs to the war room. He goes to where Emma's sitting, and he crouches down in front of her, and says something Dean can't hear. Emma nods, and then accepts his gentle hug. She's a tall kid, but Sam's so big he makes her look small, her golden-haired head barely reaching his shoulders, and Dean's heart feels a little like it's coming unstitched.

Sam comes back up the stairs and gives Dean one more squeeze on the shoulder. Then he shuts the door.

Dean studies it for a minute. Then he sighs and turns, heading back down the stairs. The war room is empty except for where Cas sits staring at his hands: Emma has already fled.

 

Claire finds her in the sex torture dungeon/file room downstairs, which is both creepy and sad. She says as much, earning a dirty look from Emma, and then settles down next to her on the cold cement floor, leaning back against the Gr-Ob shelf.

"So," she says, "is this like every fanfiction trope ever rolled into one or what?"

Emma doesn't say anything. Claire counts off on her fingers: "High school AU, de-aging trope, kidfic--well, flour fic--arranged marriage--what's next? The heat goes out and we have to do a blanket scenario?"

"Civilization is only half an hour away," Emma says.

"Half an hour is a long time in a blizzard."

Emma gives her an unimpressed look. This close, her pupils look weird, like they've started to narrow into cat-like slits. "Where does the arranged marriage come into it?"

"Well, duh," Claire says, and motions between them. "Us. Familiar and witch, bound together forever?"

"A," Emma says, "that's not how the familiar thing works. B, I'm not going to be your familiar."

"A," Claire retorts, "it was a joke. B, do you have any reason, aside from being a coward?"

"Oh yeah," Emma says sarcastically, "it's really cowardly to let myself turn into a flesh-eating monster so you don't have to be saddled with me your entire life. You're welcome."

"It's not being saddled. In case you hadn't heard, you'll be like my own rechargeable battery."

Emma stands up. "I hate you."

Claire scrambles to her feet. "Emma, you know that was a joke."

"I don't care," Emma says. "This is MY life, it's MY choice, and you're treating it like it's EASY. Like I can just decide, hey, Claire, take my whole soul and be in control of me for my whole life, so I can follow you around even when you're in college and when you get married and have babies and you have a whole life and I'm still STUCK."

"I'm not treating it like it's easy!" Claire shouts back. "I'm standing right here, I'm still right here even though I know you might jump me and tear into my jugular at any minute, and you know what, Emma? Maybe I don't want anyone in my head, either, did you think about that? Maybe the idea of you getting all up in my soul is actually REALLY FUCKING TRIGGERING for me, you ass!"

They glare at each other. Emma looks sick with horror and guilt, and Claire's white with fury and maybe something else, and that's when Kevin, scruffy and rumpled and apparently left out of the decision to evacuate No Man's Land, walks in carrying a Word of God.

"Um," he says. Takes in their expressions and backs out of the room.

Claire and Emma both glare at the door as it shuts behind him. Then Claire sighs, and bends into a crouch on the ground, arms wrapped around her knees. She presses her forehead to them.

Emma stands awkwardly for a minute. Then she crouches, too, and shuffles awkwardly closer until her knees brush Claire's.

Claire looks up through the feathery blonde of her bangs. Emma's eyes are reflected big and yellow in hers.

"Are you _sure_?" Emma whispers.

Claire takes a deep breath. "I wouldn't have offered if I wasn't."

And that's that.

 

The bunker's neatly organized store room has all the ingredients needed for the spell save one. Dean and Portia drive all the way to Topeka to get it, returning to Lebanon just as the sun is setting with an intricately carved wooden box and enough burritos to feed a football team. Dean follows Portia down the bunker stairs, depositing the bag of burritos on the table, and then catches Emma's eye where she's crouched to help Cas draw chalk symbols on the floor, her maroon scarf wrapped tightly around the bottom half of her face. He tilts his head at her, and she rocks to her feet and follows him into the kitchen.

Cas watches them go. He glances over at Claire, then, to see her watching the same thing. Then her gaze slides to him.

Cas shifts on his knees. "I am the last person who should be have this discussion with you," he says quietly, "but Claire… This commitment is forever."

"I already said yes."

"I know," Cas says. "But this is different than--"

"No," Claire says, "the only difference is that this time I knew what I was doing when I said it."

Cas can't say anything to that. He leans forward, instead, and finishes drawing the sigils.

 

"You know you don't have to do this, right?"

"Isn't this the talk you should be having with Claire?"

"I'm having it with you," Dean says. He leans back against the kitchen counter, edge digging into his palms. "I've been in the position of needing someone more than they need you, and it's not pretty."

"I know that," Emma says. "I've known that my whole life, Dad."

"Yeah," Dean says. "Yeah." He pulls her into a hug,  digging his chin into her shoulder. She digs hers into his.

"You know no matter what happens you've got me, right?" His jaw bobs against her shoulder as he talks.

"I do," Emma says quietly.

He holds her for a minute longer. Then he lets go.

They walk back into the war room. The burritos sit untouched on the table; apparently no one felt like eating. Dean doesn’t blame them; he feels like he's about to throw up any minute now, and he hasn't even eaten anything since last night.

Portia has already shifted. She pads over to Emma, who crouches in the center of the chalk-drawn sigil. James has lit incense; it fills the room with pale smoke and the smell of something flowery and putrescent.

Claire follows Emma into the sigil. She's taken off her sweater and has just a thin t-shirt on underneath, the white scars inside her elbows catching the light. She crosses them uncomfortably over her chest as Portia digs her paw into the scarred Harmonia mark on Emma's arm until her small black claws break skin and the yellow in Emma's eyes begins to glow.

Wearing latex gloves, James opens the carved box Dean and Portia brought from Topeka. From it he removes a long, pale snake skin that whispers against his gloves.

He takes the blood from the little puncture marks on Emma's arm with one gloved finger. Then he daubs three symbols onto the snake skin. One is Harmonia's mark; the other two Dean doesn't know. James waits for about a minute, letting the blood dry, and then he motions for Claire to hold up her left arm. There's goose bumps along it, the pale fine hairs standing up. James winds the snake skin around her arm, from her wrist up to her shoulder. Then he digs his thumb into her wrist and says a word.

The snake skin bursts into flame.

Dean cries out, leaping forward to seize it from Claire's arm. But it's over as quickly as it started: The snake skin is gone, and the only sign that it was ever on Claire's arm to start with is a small dark ring, like ash tattooed under the skin, encircling her upper arm.

They look at it, and then they look at Emma. Who is staring back at them with completely hazel eyes. She raises a hand, tremulously, to her mouth and feels along her teeth.

"Your traits won't be gone," Portia says carefully, watching her. "Just under different control, now."

Emma flattens her hand over her mouth. She nods, and there's a sound escaping her, from behind her hand, and for a horrible minute Dean thinks she's crying. Then he realizes she's laughing, disbelieving, nearly hysterical laughter, and he gives a whoop. He grabs her and crushes her close. Grabs Claire and squeezes her to them, too, his girls, his girls. He breathes in their mixed smells of shampoo and flat-ironed hair.

Then he lifts his head.

"Cas," he says. "Get over here. Family hugs aren't optional."

Cas creeps closer. Emma reaches a hand out for him and twists it in his shirt front to pull him into the hug. A stunned laugh escapes Cas, and then he leans into them, his face hidden in Dean's arm.

Dean smacks a kiss onto the top of Emma's head. "That's my girl."

"Shut up, Dean," Claire mumbles somewhere in the vicinity of his armpit, and the same laughter spills from Emma as from Dean, bright and disbelieving that anything could possibly work this easily.

 

The girls fall asleep in front of the TV. It seems strangely anticlimactic after everything, but Portia assures them that the casting of the spell relies heavily on the energy of the participants.

"We couldn't anchor it in Uranus this time," she says with a faint, taut smile, and Dean squeezes her arm. He can't stop grinning. It feels like when they had Cas in the bunker for that first time, before everything went to shit.

James is smiling tiredly. "Who's Emma's fairy godmother now?"

"Charlie," Dean says. "Definitely Charlie."

Portia gives him a _oh no you didn't_ look.

"You," he says. "You, Portia, God--" He grips her hand tightly. "Thank you."

"It was our pleasure," Portia says airily. She glances over her shoulder at James. "I think it's time for us to get some sleep."

"Please," James says. He looks nearly as drained as Emma and Claire, dark circles under his even darker eyes.

"I'll show you to a bedroom," Cas says, rising. He touches Dean's shoulder. "Why don’t you contact Benny and Sam with the news?"

When Cas comes back, Dean is sitting at the War Room table with a sweating bottle of beer in his hands. Another one sits on the table across from him, already opened.

Cas slides into the seat there, and for a long time, they don't say anything, just sip from their beers, watching the lump Claire and Emma make under the blankets Dean pulled over them on the couch. As they watch, Claire kicks once, twice. Emma mumbles something in protest and kicks back, slithering off the couch onto the floor and pulling her blanket over her.

Dean and Cas look at each other. Cas puts his beer bottle to his lips to press back the laughter tugging at the corners of his mouth; Dean just grins wide and leans back in his chair, tangling his ankles with Cas's under the table.

 

Sometime in the middle of the night, Emma wakes up to see Claire staring down at her, her chin hooked over the edge of the couch cushion.

"Oh my God." She pulls a pillow over her face, rolling over on the floor so she's on her stomach. "Why are you being creepy."

"I'm not being creepy," Claire says. "I'm just being happy you're okay."

Emma flushes a little at that. "Thanks," she mutters.

"You're welcome," Claire says graciously. Then she nudges Emma's arm with her hand, dangling over the side of the couch. Emma moves hers away, giving Claire's room on the pillow. Claire nudges her again. Emma lifts her palm, not quite understanding what Claire wants, and Claire slides her fingers under Emma's. Holds onto them.

Emma lifts her head from the pillow to squint up at her. Claire's grinning slyly.

"Kung Fu Grip," she says, and squeezes.

Emma groans and drops her face back into the pillow. "Creepy," she mutters, but doesn't try to pull her fingers from Claire's.

Then she gasps and shoves back up on her elbows.

"What?" Claire says in alarm.

"I just had the _best_ idea." Emma tugs her hand. "Where'd you put Pyg?"

 

Dean wakes up to fingers sifting through his hair. He has a minute of panic, the immediate weight of _what are we going to do about Emma_ bearing down on his chest, and then he remembers.

He opens his eyes. Cas smiles at him from the pillow beside him, little more than a silhouette in the fuzzy glow from the nightlight in the bathroom. "Hello, Dean."

Dean answers by rolling over onto him. They're still in their clothes from the night before, pretty much fell into bed fully dressed after finishing their beers, but Dean quickly takes care of that, pulling off first Cas's layers and then his own, grabbing kisses full of morning breath from Cas's mouth between each article of clothing. When he's done peeling off his own jeans, he swings his legs over Cas's and leans over Cas to bump his forehead against his, sift his hands up into Cas's soft hair. Cas looks back at him fondly, his warm hands sliding up Dean's sides. He closes his eyes.

Dean kisses him. Once, twice. A third time. Then enough times that he loses count of the slick slide and tease of their lips, the brushes of tongue. The hair at Cas's temples is soft against his thumbs, and Cas holds his jaw in his hands like Dean is something precious, like a worshipper sipping from a holy relic.

After a while, he pulls back, tongue swiping slowly across his lip to test the swollen-ness of it, the blood-rich taste, and he lets his forehead rest against Cas's again as he opens his eyes. Cas opens his, too, and they stare at each other. Then Cas's hands slide down to the waistband of Dean's boxers. Dean covers them with his own to help pull them off, bracing his knees one at a time on the soft sheets, then reaches down to do the same to Cas's. Cas moves his hips to let him, barely waiting for Dean to throw the fabric onto the floor before he's pulling him back down, his hands and breath everywhere. Dean mouths along the cords of muscle in his neck and slides his unfamiliarly smooth palms down the cut of Cas's biceps, the firm planes of his chest and the nipples hardening there. Cas's hands tighten, and Dean lets his head fall forward, breathes wet and warm into the hollow of his throat.

When the time comes, he scrabbles blindly out in the dark beside him for the night side table, for the handle of the top drawer and the condoms and lube inside it. His first few tries are unsuccessful, and he has to groan, lever himself off of Cas and crawl to the side of the bed, still patting around in the dark on his elbows.

He hears Cas's amusement beside him, as Cas huffs out a laugh and pushes up on the bed, rolling in the opposite direction from Dean to reach the lamp on his own nightstand. "Here," he says, and soft yellow light fills the room.

It illuminates Pyg sitting on Dean's nightstand, his glued-on googly eyes and marker-drawn smile fixed on them.

Dean's holler must echo through the whole bunker. Feet come racing down the hallway, and Cas just barely has the presence of mind to yank the blanket up over them before Dean's door flies open.

"What is it?" Emma says urgently, Claire bleary-eyed but alarmed-looking behind her.

Their eyes land on Dean and Cas's position under the comforter, and then on Pyg on the nightstand and the half-open drawer.

They explode into laughter. Dean finds the box of condoms in the drawer and throws it at them. Emma shrieks and yanks the door shut before it can hit them, and as the box bounces off the door to skitter across the floor, he can hear their laughter receding down the hall, back to the living area.

He grumbles, and slides out from under the covers to grab the box. He pads back to the bed and slaps it down on the nightstand, then grabs Pyg and stuffs him (gently) under the bed. After another second of thought, he grabs Cas's pants where they landed near the end of the bed and puts them on top of Pyg.

The bed is shaking with Cas's silent laughter. Dean glares at him, and climbs back onto the bed, yanking the blanket up and crawling under it, on top of Cas.

"Fucking kids," he mutters, and Cas laughs harder, sliding his hands up Dean's bare sides as Dean shuts him up with a kiss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**THE END**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 **acknowledgements:**  First, the tremendous gandocaolca, whose artwork kept me going through this process as she sent me absolutely adorable artwork throughout. Second, loversforlycanthropes who continually cheered and prodded me on and is, forever and always, my HFK partner in crime. Last, oranges_8_hands, who beta'd this fic and whose detailed and thoughtful feedback led to a fic I am much happier with than the original draft she received.  There simply aren't words for how appreciative I am, orange. Seriously.

 

 


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